Post by Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe on Aug 19, 2005 1:56:54 GMT -6
Satellite Discovers 1,000th Comet
One thousand comets have been discovered to date using the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. The SOHO spacecraft, a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency, has accounted for approximately one-half of all comet discoveries with computed orbits in the history of astronomy.
One thousand comets have been discovered to date using the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. The SOHO spacecraft, a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency, has accounted for approximately one-half of all comet discoveries with computed orbits in the history of astronomy.
The SOHO team also held a contest over the internet to guess the time when the 1,000th comet would be discovered. The contest winner is Andrew Dolgopolov of Dublin, Ireland, who guessed the time of the comet's closest approach to the Sun (perihelion time) within 22 minutes.
"Before SOHO was launched, 16 sungrazing comets had been discovered by space observatories. Based on that experience, who could have predicted that SOHO would discover more than sixty times that number, and in only nine years? This is truly a remarkable achievement!" said Dr. Chris St. Cyr, Senior Project Scientist for NASA's Living With a Star program at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
SOHO successfully completed its primary mission in April 1998, and it has enough fuel to remain on station and keep hunting comets for decades, assuming the LASCO instrument continues to function. Additionally, NASA's twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft, scheduled for launch in February 2006, each have two instruments that could be used to discover comets: a coronagraph like LASCO and a heliospheric imager.
More here: www.physorg.com/news5894.html
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