Daniel C Boice - Comets in the 21st Century: A personal guide to experiencing the next great comet!

Comets in the 21st Century

A personal guide to experiencing the next great comet!

Daniel C Boice

Scientific Studies & Consulting, San Antonio, Texas, USA

Thomas Hockey

University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa, USA

With a Foreword by Walter F Huebner

Morgan & Claypool Publishers

Copyright 2019 Morgan & Claypool Publishers

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ISBN 978-1-64327-446-1 (ebook)

ISBN 978-1-64327-443-0 (print)

ISBN 978-1-64327-444-7 (mobi)

DOI 10.1088/2053-2571/ab027e

Version: 20190401

IOP Concise Physics

ISSN 2053-2571 (online)

ISSN 2054-7307 (print)

A Morgan & Claypool publication as part of IOP Concise Physics

Published by Morgan & Claypool Publishers, 1210 Fifth Avenue, Suite 250, San Rafael, CA, 94901, USA

IOP Publishing, Temple Circus, Temple Way, Bristol BS1 6HG, UK

To Michael Hockey and Artyom Ivakh, who, if luck holds, will see a Great CometT H
For my granddaughter, Alison Boice, who, at the age of 9, shows promising signs of becoming a Great Comet hunter and my wife, Panida Boonmasai, for her steadfast support in all of my endeavors.D B

I knew I wanted to study the heavens, ever since peering at Comet West seeming to hover above my home. When in the 1990s it became known that another Great Comet soon would appear in the sky, I wrote The Comet HaleBopp Book: Guide to an Awe-inspiring Visitor from Deep Space (1996 (Shrewsbury, MA: ATL)). The comet did not disappoint; I recall lecturing via bull horn to a thousand people standing in front of the Adler Planetarium, seeing the comet despite the bright lights of downtown Chicago.

The goal of that book was to introduce at the most basic level this cosmic sight to the millions who would watch it. While about Comet HaleBopp specifically, the work contained a lot of general information on comets that stood in its own right. (Some of this material appears in the present volume.) Of course, it is by now outdatedin rode co-author Dr Daniel Boice, whom I had known for nearly forty years and who, during that time, devoted himself to the investigation of comets, to provide the leap in comet science and observation that has occurred in more recent years. Thanks for his support of this project also go to Dr William Sheehan, astronomy author extraordinaire.

This present volume was created literally around the world: Boice writing from Thailand and I working in the United States. We hope our combined effort pleases the reader, regardless of whether they have had the opportunity to see a Great Comet themselvesor have yet to.T H, Cedar Falls, December 2018

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I was born at the dawn of the space age and was inspired by NASAs Apollo missions, which eventually landed 12 people on the Moon. Afterwards, my interest in all things astronomical grew, and I eventually bought my first telescope, a used 60 mm refractor, while attending high school in San Francisco, CA. I quickly graduated to an 8 inch Dobsonian reflector that I built myself under the guidance of the legendary John Dobson and joined the amateur ranks by enrolling in the historic San Francisco Amateur Astronomers. I have been very fortunate to follow my dream to become a professional astronomer and am deeply indebted to NASA and the National Science Foundation who have supported my career and to the opportunities provided by my employer of 26 years, Southwest Research Institute (San Antonio, TX). Ultimately, I must thank the American people for this funding and their trust that their money would be well spent!

Although primarily a researcher, my passion for teaching still burned. I was able to share my knowledge and enthusiasm of astronomy with students at University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio Community College, and Trinity University for over 20 years. Teachers learn a lot from their students. During this time, I was fortunate to supervise graduate students, our next generation of astronomers, and participate in many foreign collaborations.

I met my co-author Dr Thomas Hockey in graduate school at New Mexico State University. I graduated three years earlier and left for Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1985 where I was converted to comet science by Comet Halley and my mentor, Dr Walter Huebner. T H joined the faculty at the University of Northern Iowa to pursue his joy of teaching and historical astronomy. Our paths diverged for several decades, even though we are both members of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and the International Astronomical Union (IAU). I took notice in 2017 when he won the prestigious Osterbrock Book Prize from the AAS Historical Astronomy Division for his four-volume reference work, Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Having the chance to co-author a book with him was a no-brainer.

Special thanks go to Dr Walter Huebner, retired Institute Scientist at Southwest Research Institute, and Professor Amaury de Almeida, Chair of the Astronomy Department at the University of So Paulo, Brazil, for reviewing our manuscript. Their insightful comments have significantly improved this book. Naturally, we are responsible for any remaining errors. I share my co-authors desire that you, the reader, will enjoy our work.D B, Puan Phu, Thailand, December 2018

Gallery of comet nuclei visited by space probes (to scale) with year of encounter. Courtesy of The Planetary Society.

Comets are unusual objects in the sky that have aroused the interest and curiosity of many who have seen one. What are these objects, where did they come from, what causes their strange appearance, and what do we know about them? The authors of this book are much better known than these comets and much younger; they will reveal to us many of a comets visual phenomena in familiar terms from everyday life without getting into deep scientific explanations.

The purpose of this book is to bring comets into the living rooms of general households, to familiarize politicians with these fascinating objects when they ponder funding for comet research, to teach children and young students, and to provide teaching tools about these very unusual objects in our skies. The presentation is very comprehensive in its description of orbits around the Sun, the development of the coma (escaping atmosphere) from a comets nucleus and source of all activities, various types of comet tails, trailing as well as leading as a comet orbits our Sun, ancient beliefs and explanations of these phenomena, and the most recent discovery of the first interstellar comet. An interstellar comet is particularly exciting, because it has the potential to reveal data about a neighboring star without going there. For example, the stellar nebula from which the star formed may have been larger or smaller than the solar nebula (thus a different density), have a different radiation field and have a somewhat different composition. This would lead to different chemical reactions and thereby affect the conditions for the origins of life when compared to the conditions in our Solar System.