2002 SPACE SCIENCE VIDEOTAPES |
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Tape Title | Record ID | Date Produced | TRT: |
Synopsis |
| GREAT COMET-HUNTING SPACECRAFT DISCOVERS 500TH COMET - VIA THE INTERNET
| G02-066 | 8/14/02 | 00:04:10 | In just under six years, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has discovered its 500th comet, making it the most prolific comet hunter in history. The 500th comet was discovered by an amateur observer in Germany using the Internet to carefully scan images taken by one of SOHO's cameras.
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TAPE CONTENTS: |
| ITEM (1): Sun-Grazing Comets
- Sun-grazing comets, seen as early as 372 BC, are believed to be the fragments from one great comet which split again and again producing the "Kreutz sun-grazer" family of comets. The use of SOHO as a tool to discover comets is a byproduct of the mission's original purpose - to continuously monitor solar weather and assist scientists in analyzing how the Sun functions. The Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO), one of the instruments on SOHO, blocks out the Sun to create an artificial eclipse and then views the space around the Sun, looking for outbursts of solar activity. This eclipse allows the Sun's faint corona to be seen and studied.
a. LASCO Christmas comet of 1996 (two views)
b. Observation of sun-grazer on 10-13 April 1998
c. Pair of sun-grazing comets on 2 June 1998
d. The 100th comet imaged on 4 February 2000
e. Sun - Plunging Comet 22 October 2001
f. Observation of Sun passing comet - April 15, 2002
Courtesy: NASA/ESA
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| ITEM (2): The 500th Comet - The video clip shows the 500th comet (in the small black square) moving over a four-hour period. The larger black square shows a close-up of the comet. Amateur astronomers worldwide placed their bets, crossed their fingers and waited in anticipation for the ESA-NASA Solar & Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) to spot its 500th comet. Their patience was rewarded on August 12 as SOHO, a mission actually designed to research the Sun, revealed its own type of royal flush with comet C/2002 P3 (SOHO) - the 500th comet to be discovered by SOHO in under six years. Between May 2 and May 31, using the SOHO website,1,256 amateur astronomers tracked SOHO's observations of comets and made predictions about the date and time that the 500th comet would be at perihelion (the closest approach to the Sun).
Courtesy: NASA/ESA
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| ITEM (3): SOHO Spacecraft Animation - Animation of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).
Courtesy: NASA/ESA
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