Word: ikeya
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Hunched at the eyepiece of his telescope early in the morning of December 29 in the Japanese city of Hamamatsu, Kaoru Ikeya suddenly grew tense. He had spotted an unfamiliar blob of light in the constellation of Ophiuchus. Five minutes later, 240 miles away in Kochi, Tsutomu Seki located the same strange object. Both checked their star maps, then hurriedly mounted their bicycles and pedaled furiously to the nearest telegraph office. There they dispatched the word to the Tokyo Astronomical Observatory. Incredibly, the same two amateur astronomers who had independently but almost simultaneously discovered 1965's famous and brilliant...
When the comet Ikeya-Seki curved around the sun last October, many a stargazer's camera was focused on its fiery trail. But two California Institute of Technology researchers were deter mined to record far more than mere surface glow. And the Astrophysical Journal last week reported remarkable success. Eric Becklin, a graduate student in physics, and James Westphal, a senior research fellow in planetary science, not only obtained the first temperature measurements ever made of a comet, they also gained valuable insight into a comet's composition and behavior...
After fitting a 24-inch telescope with a sensitive infra-red detector, the Caltech scientists trained it on the comet for 19 days during its passage around the sun. Their first temperature measurement-700° F.-was made when Ikeya-Seki came within 45 million miles of the sun and heated up enough for its infra-red emissions to be picked up on earth. As the comet raced closer to the sun, its temperature climbed gradually, reaching 1,200° F. about 20 million miles from the solar surface. Then the comet's emissions were blotted...
...infra-red recordings also seem to rule out the theory that comets are composed primarily of ice and dust. Ikeya-Seki's high temperatures could have occurred only if it contained large amounts of metallic material. Most of the comet's lighter-weight chemical elements were probably boiled away during a previous close approach to the sun. The scientists also measured the total amount of energy Ikeya-Seki radiated before and after it swung around the sun; they calculated that it lost 65% of its mass and broke into two pieces...
...Ikeya-Seki comet appeared on Indonesia's eastern horizon early one morning last October. From the base of the volcano Agung, navel of creation and home of the Great Gods, the mystic prophets of the island of Bali watched it streak through the sky for ten days and were alarmed. It was an omen, they warned, of much death and change of government in the land...