2005 SPACE SCIENCE VIDEOTAPES |
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Tape Title | Record ID | Date Produced | TRT: |
Synopsis |
| WORLD'S GREATEST COMET HUNTER TO DISCOVER 1000TH COMET | G05-058 | 8/10/05 | 4:19 | Besides studying solar wind, sunspots, and flares, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft has also become the world's greatest comet hunter, aiding in the discovery of almost half of all comets ever recorded. Saturday, August 6 marked the discovery of its highly anticipated 1,000th comet.
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TAPE CONTENTS: |
| ITEM (1): SOHO Comets 999 and 1,000 - High school teacher and amateur astronomer, Toni Scarmato of Calabria, Italy, discovered SOHO-999 and SOHO-1000 by combing through the online SOHO data; both are small Kreutz sun-grazing comets. Andrew Dolgopolov of Dublin, Ireland won a contest in which he guessed the discovery time within 22 minutes. Courtesy: NASA/ESA
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| ITEM (2): Lasco Movie - After scientists discovered 'sungrazing' comets with SOHO, they started posting the images online and initiated a global community of amateur comet hunters. SOHO's Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) instrument creates a continuous artificial eclipse of the Sun, letting us see comets that would otherwise be missed by ground observations.
Courtesy: NASA/ESA
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| ITEM (3): Kruetz "Sungrazing" Comets - The Kruetz group of 'sungrazing' comets account for 85 percent of the nearly 1,000 comets that SOHO has seen. They are so small that they seem to vaporize after their orbit reaches the Sun. This animation depicts their probable origin hundreds of years ago: the breakup of a large parent comet near the Sun and fragments cascading through the solar system.
Courtesy: NASA/ESA
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| ITEM (4): SOHO Spacecraft Animation - The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) operates at a vantage point of about 1 million miles out in space between the Sun and Earth. It carries 12 instruments and is a joint project with the European Space Agency (ESA).
Courtesy: NASA
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Space Science Gallery