(meteorobs) Error in USA WEEKEND article "Summer with the Stars"

[Skywayinc at aol.com]

While I have only the highest regard for Bill Cooke of  NASA's Marshall 
Space Flight Center for all of the research he has done over the  years 
concerning meteors and meteor showers, he made a major error while  being quoted in 
a special feature -- "Starry Starry Nights" -- in Sunday's  USA WEEKEND. 
 
Toward the end of the article, the talk turns to comet  ISON with 
speculations on how it will perform.  While there are  relatively sanguine outlooks 
from Astronomy magazine's Michael Bakich and Sky  & Telescope's Alan 
MacRobert, Bill Cooke is quoted in the article as saying  that he believes the 
comet: 
 
" . . . will break up when it gets close to the sun,  disappointing 
everyone who hopes for a sky show. He points to 1973's Comet  Kohoutek, another 
would-be Comet of the Century that partly broke up on  approaching the sun and 
failed to impress. 'It didn't even come as close to  the sun as Comet ISON 
will and it broke up,' he  says."   
 
The trouble with this statement is that Comet  Kohoutek did not break up at 
all!  It remained completely intact as  it swept around the sun, coming no 
closer than 13.2 million miles on Dec. 28,  1973.  Kohoutek was a "new" 
comet from the Oort cloud, which (as many such  comets tend to do) perform 
rather poorly in terms of brightening en route to the  sun.  
 
Actually, Kohoutek went on a brief "splurge" upon  rounding the sun; as a 
consequence its magnitude shot up to -3 and it was a very  spectacular sight 
for the three astronauts on board the Skylab Space  Station.  Soon after 
perihelion, unfortunately, the comet quickly  diminished in brightness and 
ended up disappointing many of us who were hoping  to see a beautiful celestial 
showpiece.  But it always remained  intact.
 
Perhaps Bill was thinking of Comet West in 1976,  which shattered into 4 
parts as it came within 18 million miles of the Sun on  February 25, 1976. But 
soon after that, West evolved into a magnificent  sight, briefly becoming 
visible during the daytime and 7 to 10  days later displayed a tail which had 
five separate  components.  These attributes likely were due to West's  
nucleus fragmenting, allowing for tremendous amounts of dust to be released 
into  space, thus causing it to unfurl a tremendously large and complex  tail.
 
So maybe if ISON breaks into several pieces at  perihelion it might 
actually be a GOOD thing.  
We'll see . . . 
-- joe r.  
 
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