This Week in History: March 8-14
MARCH 8, 1772: A French amateur astronomer, Jacques Montaigne, discovers a comet that is followed for one month and that reaches 7th magnitude. Over the next 5½ decades the comet is discovered on two subsequent returns, the latter of these being in 1826 by an Austrian army officer, Wilhelm von Biela, for whom it was …
Comet of the Week: 1P/Halley 1981i
Perihelion: 1986 February 9.46, q = 0.587 AU Those of us space-minded people who came of age during the middle decades of the 20th Century learned of Comet Halley and its impending return in 1986, and many of us undoubtedly heard stories of its appearance during its excellent return in 1910; my paternal grandmother, an …
Special Topic: Comet 1P/Halley
To our ancestors of just a few centuries ago, comets were, at best, mysterious objects, very possibly of divine or supernatural origin. When one considers that bright comets could appear anywhere in the nighttime sky, seemingly out of nowhere, and after being visible for a few days or weeks would then disappear, it is little …
This Week in History: March 1-7
MARCH 1, 1705: British astronomer Edmond Halley publishes his calculations of the orbits of the comets of 1531, 1607, and 1682, concluding that they are individual returns of the same comet, and that that comet would return in 1758. His prediction turned out to be correct, and the comet has been named in his honor. …
Comet of the Week: West 1975n
Perihelion: 1976 February 25.22, q = 0.197 AU What I consider to be the best comet I have ever seen was missed by most of the general public. Part of this was due to the fact that it put on its best appearance in the sleepy hours before dawn, but a large part of it …
Special Topic: Fred Whipple’s Comet Model
Once it had become clear that comets are bona fide members of the solar system just as planets and asteroids are, the question then becomes just what their physical nature might be. While they may appear to be fairly large in our nighttime sky, the fact that background stars shine through their tails and their …
Whipple’s Shield protected Giotti
When the Giotti spacecraft launched on its voyage to explore Halley’s Comet in 1985, it was an invention by the son of an Iowa farmer decades earlier that allowed the mission to be successful. The most difficult problem of the mission to overcome was how to ensure that Giotto survived long enough to snap its …
SpaceX Crew Dragon closing in on first launch with astronauts aboard
The United States is drawing closer to launching humans from American soil once again with the arrival of the newest SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The capsule is slated to launch with a crew of two NASA astronauts on the Demo-2 mission sometime this spring, marking the first time …
Finalists selected for naming NASA’s next Mars rover
After conducting a nationwide contest where kindergarten through 12th grade students across the United States submitted essays to “Name the Rover,” NASA has selected nine candidate names as finalists to come up with a fitting name for NASA’s Mars 2020 rover. The nine candidate names were selected from more than 28,000 essays submitted since the …
This Week in History: February 23-29
FEBRUARY 23, 1988: David Levy obtains the final visual observation of Comet 1P/Halley during its 1986 return, using the 1.5-meter telescope at Catalina Observatory in Arizona. The comet was located 8.0 AU from the sun and appeared at 17th magnitude. FEBRUARY 24, 1979: The U.S. Defense Department satellite P78-1 is launched from Vandenberg Air Force …