[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
(meteorobs) OT-Comet Schroeder
From Aerielle Louise ;-)
Mn.Talk Radio Network
7/25/01
Thanks, to all, for your responses to this morning's
query.
After much searching - I think this is what the person
was asking about.
A. ;-)
Comet Schroeder is now purported to be on its way on an
early
arrival in 2001.
http://www.academicpress.com/inscight/05172000/graphb.htm
The Comet That Nobody Saw
Professional astronomers and amateurs alike scan the
sky
continuously, looking for new, undiscovered objects.
But in 1997
they spectacularly missed a comet tearing through the
solar system,
says a team that recorded the comet with a camera
aboard the Solar
and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). "I'm surprised
nobody on the
ground actually discovered [it]," says Brian Marsden of
the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
One of SOHO's jobs is to study the solar wind--a
giant stream of
particles emitted by the sun--with a wide-angle
ultraviolet camera,
called the Solar Wind Anisotropies (SWAN) camera. But
SWAN can
help spot comets, too; when a comet approaches the sun,
it emits
gases, including hydrogen, that emit ultraviolet light.
So Teemu
Mäkinen of the Finnish Meteorological Institute in
Helsinki and his
colleagues used SWAN images to catalog all moving
objects
recorded between December 1995 and July 1998, after
which SOHO
temporarily fell silent (ScienceNOW, 26 June 1998). To
their
surprise, the researchers found the tracks of a comet
that had
previously gone undetected.
SWAN's angular resolution was too low to calculate
its orbit. But
the comet ejected water vapor in irregular spurts,
which indicates
that it has formed a crust. That suggests it has an
elliptical orbit and
regularly skirts the sun, the team reports in the 18
May issue of
Nature.
Mäkinen believes the comet is bright enough to be
spotted using
high-power binoculars or a small telescope. "For
amateur
astronomers, it would have been an easy object to
find," he says.
Perhaps it escaped detection because it approached
Earth from
behind the sun or because it moved through the southern
sky, which
is less well-covered by systematic comet hunts, he
says. But
Marsden says the comet may have been dimmer than the
team
estimates. Using ultraviolet observations to calculate
a comet's
brightness as seen on Earth "may be a tricky problem,"
he says.
--Alexander Hellemans
http://www.academicpress.com/inscight/05172000/graphb.htm
COMET TO VISIT SOON:
The biggest news from Schroeder Observatory where
the 300" Schroeder Telescope is housed is the arrival
next year of Schroeder’s
Comet, stated Harry P. Schroeder local taxidermist and
amateur astronomer.
My Great Grandfather discovered this in 1910 and
originally calculated its orbit
to be every 76 years, exactly the same as Halley’s
Comet. However, Schroeder’s
Comet seems to have a mind of its own and only pops up
when major disasters
occur, 1929, 1941, 1963, and is now purported to be on
its way on an early
arrival in 2001 - the same year that will be the apex
of our stock market
http://www.goldhunt.com/jackson5.html
To stop getting email from the 'meteorobs' list, use the Web form at:
http://www.tiacdot net/users/lewkaren/meteorobs/subscribe.html