HYAKUTAKE NEARS CLOSEST APPROACH TO EARTH.Byline: Malcolm W. Browne The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times Hyakutake, the brightest comet in 20 years, will reach its closest approach to Earth tonight, revealing itself to viewers with access to clear, dark skies Dark Skies is an American sci-fi/drama television series which aired during the 1996-1997 season for 20 episodes. The success of The X-Files on the FOX Network proved there was an audience for genre shows, resulting in the NBC Network commissioning this proposed and affording scores of observatories a rare opportunity to study some primeval pri·me·val adj. Belonging to the first or earliest age or ages; original or ancient: a primeval forest. [From Latin pr ingredients of the solar system. The comet, discovered in Japan on Jan. 30 by Yuji Hyakutake, will come within 9.3 million miles of Earth during the night and will extend across a patch of sky several times the size of the full moon. By Friday it had reached an overall brightness equivalent to that of moderately bright stars and was visible to the naked eye. However, Hyakutake seems dimmer dim·mer n. 1. A rheostat or other device used to vary the intensity of an electric light. 2. a. A parking light on a motor vehicle. b. A low beam. than these stars because its light is spread over a wide area rather than concentrated at a single point. The comet's small nucleus is emitting jets of dust and electrically charged gas, which spew away in a spiral pattern as the comet pinwheels through space. French astronomers at the Meudon Observatory monitoring the movement of these jets calculate the comet's rotation rate at about 6-1/2 revolutions per hour. By Friday, the comet had moved too far north for continued viewing by the great observatories in the Southern Hemisphere that have produced some of the most spectacular photographs so far, notably the European Southern Observatory European Southern Observatory (ESO), an intergovernmental organization for astronomical research with headquarters in Garching, near Munich, Germany. The ESO began in 1962 as a consortium among Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. in Chile. But the comet, which is speeding toward the sun at 93,000 mph, is now visible to all major Northern Hemisphere observatories as well as several orbiting telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the first large optical orbiting observatory. Built from 1978 to 1990 at a cost of $1.5 billion, the HST (named for astronomer E. P. Hubble) was expected to provide the clearest view yet obtained of the universe. . None of the powerful instruments scrutinizing the Hyakutake comet have been able to glimpse its nucleus of "dirty snow," which is probably only several miles in diameter. But the irregularly shaped, dusty, gaseous coma surrounding the nucleus, made of cometary material evaporated by the heat of the sun, has grown to many hundreds of miles in diameter. Complex, kinked tails, consisting of dust and ionized i·on·ize tr. & intr.v. i·on·ized, i·on·iz·ing, i·on·iz·es To convert or be converted totally or partially into ions. i gas, have also been detected by telescopes. |
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