comets

COMETS Comets have been witnessed ever since man has been speculating about objects in the nighttime sky and appear in records from the beginning of recorded civilization (Schweighauser 20). Comets are made up of four distinct features. The first is the nucleus. The nucleus is made up of frozen gases, mostly water vapor with lesser amounts of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, and imbedded in the frozen gases are interplanetary dust and tiny fragments of stony …

…third closest approach of a comet to our planet in recorded history. ON the most recent apparition, the comet was recovered by the Keck II 10-m reflector at Mauna Kea by Karen J. Meech, O.R. Hainut, and J. Bauer on 1997 March 4. When they witnessed it, there was no trace of a coma, but by January the diameter of the coma was between 8 and 12 arc minutes. The comet passed closest to the sun on February 28,1998.