Word: cometed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...scientists aren't likely to be embarrassed by C/1996 B2, better known as Comet Hyakutake. By last week the recently discovered visitor from the edge of the solar system was already being spotted without telescopes or binoculars by stargazers from the Azores to Australia, and many of them rushed to the Internet to report their observations. "This thing is starting to look amazing," wrote Marcus Featherston of Panama City, Florida, in a Usenet newsgroup called sci.astro.amateur. "I could see it through my car window!" And that was while Hyakutake was still brightening. When it reaches maximum intensity this week...
Even scientists have developed a touch of comet fever. They have commandeered the world's most powerful telescopes, including the high-flying Hubble, to plumb the secrets of one of the most ancient objects orbiting the sun. Says Daniel Green, an astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts: "It's the brightest one since 1976, and we're dropping everything to study...
When Japanese amateur astronomer Yuji Hyakutake first caught sight of the comet through a pair of binoculars on Jan. 30 (it was his second comet discovery; the first came just a month earlier) there was no reason to think it would be especially bright. But when professionals calculated the orbit, they realized that Hyakutake would be approaching to within a mere 9.3 million miles of Earth, only 40 times as distant as the moon...
That makes it the closest comet since 1983 and gives it a leg up on visibility (Halley's came no nearer than 39 million miles). Better yet, Hyakutake's trajectory will place it high in the northern sky when it reaches peak brightness this week, so that it will be visible for most of the night over most of the northern hemisphere...
Finally, the shape of Hyakutake's orbit tells astronomers that it has been here before, perhaps 9,000 years ago. That's crucial: the only reason a comet is visible at all is that its tiny core, just a few miles across, is surrounded by a giant cloud of gas and dust that can spread over a million miles. The cloud spews from the comet itself, as the sun's heat turns its dirty, icy surface into dirty water vapor mixed with other gases. If a comet is on its maiden voyage to the inner solar system, though, its surface...