Word: cometted
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There is a chance that Comet Arend-Roland will be the first really bright comet since 1910 (Halley's, not due to be seen again by earthlings until about 1984), but astronomers hate to make predictions about comets. Far from behaving like respectable members of the solar system, they are skittish and unpredictable. They wax and wane capriciously. Some of them grow magnificent tails; others...
...long as these "dirty snowballs" stay far enough from the sun, as most of them do, they lead peaceful lives, but a plunge toward the center of the solar system is a wild adventure. As a comet approaches the sun, its surface is warmed by the strengthening sunlight. Layer after layer, the ices turn into gas. Soon the nucleus is surrounded by a rapidly growing cloud, of gas and dust boiled out of the solid nucleus. This cloud, the comet's head, may be many thousands of miles in diameter. It is so transparent that stars show through...
...Comet Arend-Roland was discovered last Nov. 8 by S. Arend and G. Roland of the Royal Observatory at Uccle. Belgium. At that time it was a faint, hazy object, much too dim to be seen without a telescope. Astronomers studied its motion and decided that it would pass within 30 million miles of the sun. Heading for outer space again, it will come within about 52 million miles of the earth on April...
Radical Tail. During its plunge toward the sun, Comet Arend-Roland developed a respectable head and tail, and there is good reason to hope that it will come through its solar ordeal without too much loss of substance. Astronomers have plenty of questions to ask it; their instruments and understanding have improved enormously since...
...important new technique will be to observe the comet's tail with radio telescopes. If it is really full of peculiar chemical fragments (free radicals), as astronomers suspect, the fragments should be excited by sunlight and made to broadcast on characteristic wave lengths. The Naval Research Laboratory in Washington has turned its 50-ft. radio disk on the comet in the hope of detecting waves from hydroxl (OH) radicals. If astronomers find this odd stuff in comets, they may be able to trace it back into interstellar space. This may lead them, in turn, to new knowledge about what...