Word: halley
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...view from ground-based obser vatories is of great impor tance as well. It was with the mammoth 200-incher at Palomar Observatory in California that Astronomers David C. Jewitt and G. Edward Danielson first spied Halley's, on Oct. 16, 1982, when it was more than 1 billion miles from earth. Ever since then, most of the world's major telescopes have been trained on the comet at some point. At Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., Astronomers Lawrence Wasserman and Edward Bowell have calculated 40 points on the comet's route at which it will pass directly in front...
...examine the hydrogen cloud surrounding the comet. The Soviet Union's Vega 1 and Vega 2 will analyze the abundant dust motes and charged gases that envelop the comet's nucleus. Most remarkable of all, data and pictures from the Vega twins will enable European scientists to chart Halley's course precisely enough to allow their probe, Giotto, to come within about 300 miles of the nucleus, snapping thousands of photographs as it swoops by. Says Kunio Hirao, a former top official at Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), "This kind of space-based collaboration by scientists...
Although for budgetary reasons it opted in 1981 against launching a Halley's probe of its own, NASA nonetheless remains smack in the middle of the action. The agency plans to dedicate part of two shuttle missions, including the flight that will boost aloft Teacher Sharon Christa McAuliffe, to comet- related experiments. The Solar Max satellite, brought back to life l8 months ago by a shuttle repair crew and now performing its normal duty of monitoring the sun, will examine Halley's off and on for about 60 days. Pioneer 12, in orbit around Venus, will watch Halley's when...
There are good reasons for this intensive scrutiny. To astronomers, a comet is a sort of flying museum stocked with precious artifacts from the very earliest moments of the solar system. They hope that by peering into Halley's cold heart and sniffing out the dust and gases that stream from its surface, they can discern the conditions that existed at the birth of the sun and the nine planets some 4.5 billion years ago. That in turn could reveal how common an occurrence the formation of planets around other stars may be, hence how likely it is that extraterrestrial...
Still, the mounting mania greeting Halley's return has less to do with science than with the comet's reputation as a fiery harbinger of doom and its familiar role in presaging such events as the fall of Jerusalem in the 1st century or the Norman Conquest (see box). Indeed, for the public as well as scientists, 1986 may turn out to be the Year of the Comet. "The arrival of Halley's comet is not just an astronomical event," insists Joseph Laufer, ^ editor and publisher of a three-year-old Halley's comet newsletter. "It's a cultural event...