Word: tempel
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Stargazers are celebrating and satellites are battening the hatches as the earth makes its annual passage Wednesday and Thursday through the trail of the Tempel-Tuttle comet. Each year on or around November 18, different parts of the world are treated to the Leonids - a show of "shooting stars" (actually meteoroids from the comet's tail). Normally 10 to 20 light up the night sky each hour, but this year the show should be considerably better. Astronomical records dating to the beginning of the millennium show that every 33 years or so the Leonids spike a little as the comet...
...Leonid meteor storm -- and while stargazers across the globe settle down for a romantic cascade of shooting stars, scientists and corporations scramble to save their satellites from the biggest Earth-bound bombardment the space age has ever seen. As you read this, tiny fragments from the Comet Tempel-Tuttle's tail are whizzing toward our unsuspecting planet at a dizzying 155,000 mph. You, of course, are protected by many miles of flammable, oxygen-rich atmosphere. The satellite your pager uses -- not to mention your phone company, your cable company and your government -- isn't so lucky. Our entire orbital...
...Leonids, so named because they seem to radiate from the constellation Leo, are actually debris shed by comet Tempel-Tuttle. In an elongated, 33-year orbit of the sun, the comet travels as far out as Uranus, then back to within 91 million miles of the solar surface, passing close to Earth's orbit on both its way in and its way out. Like other comets, Tempel-Tuttle is, in effect, a dirty snowball that heats up as it approaches the sun and boils off some of its "dirt," which consists largely of particles, some pea size...
Indeed, that is the situation this month. Tempel-Tuttle recently swept past Earth, swinging around the sun in February, and headed back toward the outer solar system. As a result, Earth will come within 700,000 miles of the center of the stream--a close shave by astronomical standards. And because Tempel-Tuttle orbits the sun in the opposite direction of Earth, the meteoroids will hurtle in at a closing speed of some 160,000 m.p.h...