Word: cometted
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...earth, made four long space walks and watched the sun rise and set more than 1,300 times. In their Apollo ferry ship, they will be carrying 900 lbs. of scientific experiments, thousands of pictures of the earth, sun and that elusive visitor to the solar system, the comet Kohoutek. Magnetic tapes holding scientific data about the earth alone could stretch for 19 miles...
...shivering cold atop Manhattan's Empire State Building last week, a hardy band of amateur astronomers were asked by a television interviewer what they thought of Kohoutek's comet. "Flop of the century!" they agreed unanimously. At a comet party near Chicago, Astronomer J. Allen Hynek explained away the weak drink that he was serving his 800 guests. "A fake punch for a fake comet," he said...
...celestial object that had been widely billed as "the comet of the century" had indeed turned out to be a disappointing dud. Looking with unaided eye into the southwest sky after sunset, most observers in well-lighted, smoggy metropolitan areas could find no trace of Kohoutek. Even with binoculars, they saw only a faint smudge near the bright planets Venus and Jupiter. From their orbital vantage, the Skylab astronauts found that the comet had suddenly become bewilderingly faint; only a few days before, they had enthusiastically described it as glowing "yellow and orange, just like a flame...
Sticky Glue. Some NASA astronomers speculated that the sun's heat might have baked the comet's exterior into a kind of "sticky glue" that prevented some of the cometary dust and gas from boiling off. University of Arizona Astronomer Elizabeth Roemer, for one, found this theory improbable. Comets, she explained, are too gaseous and fragile to develop such a crust. Other astronomers suggested that Kohoutek, a "virgin" comet making its first approach to the inner part of the solar system and never before exposed to the warmth of the sun, had flared up briefly when its more...
...fadeout from public view, Comet Kohoutek was far from a scientific disappointment. About a month after they had detected methyl cyanide molecules in the comet's head, radio astronomers atop Kitt Peak last week reported picking up the "signature" of hydrogen cyanide molecules in radio waves from Kohoutek. The discovery has dual significance. Both molecules have been found in the clouds of gases and dust in the vast reaches between the stars; thus their presence in the comet lends strong support to the theory that comets were formed from the same interstellar material out of which the solar system...