1,000 Comets: A Tribute to
Dedicated Amateurs
As reported previously in The
Citizen Scientist, the Solar and Heliospheric
Observatory ( SOHO
) is a joint space mission to observe the sun conducted
by the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. SOHO was
designed to monitor flares and other activity on the
sun. But professional and amateur astronomers soon realized
that the images from SOHO might also capture previously
undiscovered comets as they approached the sun. Soon
hundreds of comets were being discovered on SOHO imagery
posted on the web, around three-fourths of them by dedicated
amateurs.
A major achievement recently occurred
when the 1,000th SOHO comet was discovered. Here is
the announcement from the SOHO web site:
A
Thousand Comets - A Tribute to Amateurs
"It's finally official: SOHO comets
can no longer be designated with only three digits .
On 5 August 2005, Toni Scarmato, a high school teacher
from San Costantino di Briatico, Calabria, Italy, discovered
SOHO's 999th and 1000th comet. Scarmato, an astrophysics
graduate of Bologna University, said 'I am very happy
for this special experience that is possible thanks
to the SOHO satellite and NASA-ESA collaboration. I
want to dedicate the SOHO 1000th comet to my wife Rosy
and my son Kevin to compensate for the time that I have
taken from them to search for SOHO comets.'
"The winner of the SOHO
1000th Comet Contest was Andrew Dolgopolov of Dublin,
Ireland, who guessed the time of the comet's closest
approach to the Sun (perihelion time) within 22 minutes.
The runner-up was David Spangler of Havertown, Pennsylvania,
USA, and third place goes to Gary Toller of Columbia,
MD, USA. Congratulations!
"But most of all, we would like
to take this opportunity to thank the SOHO 'comet hunters.'
Spending countless hours searching the data downloaded
from the web, sometimes only an hour after the images
were taken, sometimes years later when looking for overlooked
specks of light, the world-wide community of hundreds
of amateur astronomers have made a huge contribution
to science: The catalog of 1000 SOHO comets (and counting!)
has nearly doubled the number of comets with known orbital
parameters, and forms a treasure trove of data for researchers
investigating the nature of our solar system. There
is no way this could have been done without you: Thank
you!"
You can learn much more about the latest
SOHO comet news from the European
Space Agency. Want to try your hand at discovering
a comet? Visit the SOHO
web site and find out what's involved. The site
is well worth a visit, especially because it is very
friendly to amateur astronomers.
Forrest M. Mims III 
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