Tale of the Comet

Hidden from earthly view by the glare of the sun for the past few months, the recently discovered comet, Kohoutek, has now been "recaptured" by telescope. Astronomers are delighted with what they see: Kohoutek, which may be come the most spectacular comet of this century (TIME, June 4), has already begun to develop a fiery tail. The comet will become visible to the naked eye by early December, when it will appear in the morning sky. By early January, its tail--formed when the gases boiling off the comet are swept away from the sun by charged solar particles--may stretch across one-sixth of the evening sky. In fact, Kohoutek may glow many times brighter than Halley's comet, which blazed across the sky in 1910.

Kohoutek probably originated far beyond the outermost planet, where billions of comets are believed to orbit the sun. They were apparently born out of the same cloud of interstellar dust and gas that created the sun and the planets some 4.6 billion years ago, and have remained largely unchanged since. Occasionally, the tug of a nearby star pulls a comet into a far more elongated orbit, bringing it closer to the sun and making it visible from earth. Thus, as Kohoutek approaches, astronomers will have a rare opportunity to learn more about the primordial stuff out of which the solar system was created.

Major telescopes, from Mount Palomar's giant 200-in. reflector on down, will follow Kohoutek across the sky. NASA, too, will go all out, sponsoring Operation Kohoutek, a multimillion-dollar effort involving hundreds of scientists and the latest space-age technology.

The space agency will fly planes equipped with infra-red telescopes--both before and after the comet makes its pass around the sun (see diagram). A special comet observatory is being built on South Baldy Mountain, near Socorro, N. Mex. NASA will also launch several rockets carrying instruments to observe the comet from above the earth's obscuring atmosphere. Mariner 10, an unmanned spacecraft scheduled to be launched on Nov. 3 for a flyby of Venus and Mercury, will transmit a TV picture of Kohoutek. Pioneer 8, another satellite already in orbit around the sun, should be in position in early January to transmit radio signals through the comet's tail, thus providing clues to its makeup. Even the space agency's large Goldstone antenna in California's Mojave Desert will be mobilized--to bounce radar signals off the comet's nucleus.

The most important observations may well be made by Skylab 3, which is still scheduled for launch on Nov. 10 despite problems last week in fueling the first-stage booster. The flight may be lengthened from its original 56 days to as many as 85 days. That will let the astronauts view the comet during the time when it is close by and most influenced by solar radiation: from Dec. 28, when Kohoutek emerges from behind the sun, until mid-January, when it sweeps to within 75 million miles of the earth.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.