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	comet. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-05
		In 1705, however, Edmond Halley concluded that the comet observed in 1682 was the same one that had been described in 1531 and 1607, and he predicted that it would return again in late 1758 or early 1759.
		As the comet approaches the sun, the solar wind drives particles and gases from the nucleus and coma to form a tail which can extend as much as 100 million mi (160 million km) in length.
		Some of this material moves around the comet’s orbit as a stream of meteoroids (see meteor); when the earth passes through this path, a meteor shower is observed.
	www.bartleby.com /65/co/comet.html (1100 words)

	C&MS: C/1975 V1 (West)
		West estimated the magnitude as 14 or 15, and described the comet as diffuse, with a head 2-3 arc seconds across and a tail extending 10 arc seconds toward the north.
		West noted the comet was moving rather slowly and when he began looking at other plates of the region he subsequently found a comet within the constellation Grus on plates exposed by Oscar Pizarro on August 10.21 and by Guido Pizarro on August 13.19.
		The comet was last detected on September 25.1, when Shao said nucleus B was situated 33.2 arc seconds toward PA 334° from nucleus A, and nucleus D was situated 17.6 arc seconds toward PA 338° from nucleus A. The comet was then situated 3.78 AU from Earth and 3.74 AU from the sun.
	cometography.com /lcomets/1975v1.html (1615 words)

	The Art of Space
		Comets are small, fragile, irregularly shaped bodies composed of a mixture of non-volatile grains and frozen gases.
		Comet structures are diverse and very dynamic, but they all develop a surrounding cloud of diffuse material, called a coma, that usually grows in size and brightness as the comet approaches the Sun.
		A second possible explanation is that the X-rays are produced from the violent collision between the comet material and the supersonic "wind" of plasma and particles streaming away from the Sun.
	library.thinkquest.org /C0126702/comet.htm (1329 words)

	Comet West (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05)
		'''Comet West''' (formally designated C/1975 V1) was a spectacular comet, sometimes considered to qualify for the status of "great comet".
		Image:W-preview.jpg It was discovered by Richard M. West in late 1975 and reached peak brightness in March 1976.
		Comet West was what 1973's Comet Kohoutek should have been.
	comet-west.borgfind.com (161 words)

	Comet West: The Great Comet of 1976
		Comet West was a stunning sight in the predawn sky of March, 1976, bright with a tall and broad dust tail.
		Comet West passed perihelion on February 25, 1976, at a distance of 0.20 a.u.
		Comet West remained my most spectacular astronomical sight for 20 years; it has since been equaled by Comets Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp, and perhaps exceeded by the Leonid meteor storm of 2001.
	home.earthlink.net /~tonyhoffman/cometwest.htm (300 words)

	Comet West
		The last time Comet West came around was about 550,000 BC, very roughly the time of: the last reversal of Earth's magnetic field, about 750,000 BC; and the appearance of Homo Sapiens on Earth, about 200,000 BC, as determined by autosomal and mitochondrial DNA studies and Y-chromosome studies.
		Although not visually obvious, the comet sports a (blue) gas tail as well as a dust tail.
		Although comet NEAT (C/2002 V1) was not visible in the LASCO images until about 16:00 (Universal Time) on February 16, it had in fact been tracked by SOHO since December 31 last year.
	www.valdostamuseum.org /hamsmith/west.html (487 words)

	When Comets Break Apart
		Comet Wirtanen fragmended in 1957 a little inside the orbit of Saturn, and something similar occurred to Comet Biela/Bambert.
		Comets must adjust to the changing plasma potential as they move radially toward or away from the Sun.
		Electrical theorist Wallace Thornhill has noted that the remarkable 300,000 km wide flare-up of comet Halley between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus followed some of the largest solar flares ever recorded (under the assumptions of the "snowball" theory of comets, the nucleus should be frozen and inert at that distance).
	www.rense.com /general69/comets.htm (904 words)

	Section 1: What is a Comet?
		Comets are cold bodies, and we see them only because the gases in their comae and tails fluoresce in sunlight (somewhat akin to a fluorescent light) and because of sunlight reflected from the solids.
		As a comet ages from many trips close to the Sun, there is evidence that it loses most of its ices, or at least those ices anywhere near the nucleus surface, and becomes just a very fragile old "rock" in appearance, indistinguishable at a distance from an asteroid.
		Though the coma and tails of a comet may extend for tens of millions of kilometers and become easily visible to the naked eye in Earth's night sky, as Comet West's were in 1976, the entire phenomenon is the product of a tiny nucleus only a few kilometers across.
	seds.lpl.arizona.edu /sl9/Educator/section01.html (1244 words)

	Comet LINEAR Continues to Disintegrate
		Kidger was the first to notice comet LINEAR disintegrating as he monitored a cloud of gas (called the "coma") surrounding the comet's core using the 1-meter Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope.
		Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was larger than comet LINEAR, and it broke apart as the result of tidal stresses it experienced when it passed less than 100 thousand kilometers from Jupiter (within 1.4 Jupiter radii from the planet's center).
		The nucleus of a comet is an irregular ball of ice and dust typically 1 to 10 km in diameter.
	science.nasa.gov /headlines/y2000/ast31jul_1m.htm (1737 words)

	Stardust \| JPL \| NASA
		Normally, comets are inert when they are beyond the orbit of Jupiter, so it has been speculated that Comet Hale-Bopp is either a rather large comet or experienced a bright outburst (or both).
		Comet Hale-Bopp made its closest approach to Earth on March 22, 1997 at a distance of 1.315 AU (1 AU = 93 million miles or 150 million km).
		The comet did not pass particularly close to either the Sun or the Earth, but because of its rather large size, the comet was very bright and reached a peak magnitude of about -1.
	stardust.jpl.nasa.gov /science/hb.html (320 words)

	SPACE.com -- The Greatest Comets of All Time
		Comet McNaught, which was discovered last August by astronomer Robert McNaught at Australia’s Siding Spring Observatory, was one of the greatest comets in recent times.
		While it’s true that comets that are visible with the naked eye during the daytime are rare, the case of McNaught is not unique.
		The comet was then visible as a brilliant object within a degree or two of the Sun, and wherever the sky was clear, the comet could be seen by observers merely by blocking out the Sun with their hands.
	www.space.com /spacewatch/070119_ns_great_comets.html (1960 words)

	StarChild: Comets
		The earliest known record of a comet sighting was made by an astrologer of the Chinese court in 1059 B.C. Scientists believe that comets are the debris left from the solar nebula which condensed to form the Sun and planets in our solar system.
		If the comet nucleus is pulled into an orbit which carries it close to the Sun, the solar heat will cause the outer layers of the icy nucleus to evaporate.
		We are able to see a comet because of the reflection of the Sun's light off of the comet and because of the gas molecules in the coma releasing energy absorbed from the Sun's rays.
	starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov /docs/StarChild/solar_system_level2/comets.html (475 words)

	Hail, Hale-Bopp, and Farewell
		Comets are notoriously unpredictable, as anyone remembering the flop of Comet Kohoutek back in 1974 can attest to, but apart from a brief lull in its rate of brightening late last summer, Hale-Bopp did nothing to let us down.
		When the comet reached perihelion, 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult killed themselves believing that their souls would be transported to the spaceship they thought was trailing the comet, the worst mass suicide ever to occur on U.S. soil.
		Comet West of 1976 showed a bright, curving dust tail with five distinct branches, and in 1910, Earth actually passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet.
	home.earthlink.net /~tonyhoffman/hailhalebopp.htm (1660 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05)
		Comet Hyakutake's halo-like glow was a sight to behold throughout the Northern Hemisphere in March of 1996.
		Comet Hyakutake (pronounced YAH-koo-tah-key) was discovered Jan. 31 by amateur Japanese astronomer Yuji Hyakutake using six-inch diameter binoculars, a sophisticated stargazing instrument.
		Unlike meteors or shooting stars, comets tend to hang among the stars as a glowing cloud with a bright core and dim tail.
	www.usatoday.com /weather/wcometst.htm (999 words)

	One splendid comet
		To amateurs, the comet was the brightest since at least 1976, when Comet West blazed through the heavens.
		(The coma is the gauzy cloud of gas and dust spewed from the comet's nucleus that accounts for the comet's cotton-ball appearance.) According to experts at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD., the X-rays probably were made in a shock wave produced by the collision between the coma and the solar wind (defined).
		A comet's chemical cargo is always interesting for the scarce information it can reveal about conditions when the comet, and the solar system, formed.
	www.geology.wisc.edu /courses/g115/comets/hya_lessons.html (622 words)

	Extrasolar Comets by Ken Croswell
		If comets exist around other stars, astronomers should be able to see them directly, says an astronomer at the University of California in Los Angeles.
		Comets are much smaller than Earth, but as they approach the Sun, its radiation heats their surfaces and causes them to sprout two types of tails: dust and gas.
		Although Comet West was also bright, it passed so close to the Sun that seeing it would have been hard for an extraterrestrial observer.
	www.sonic.net /~antares/ExtrasolarComets.html (507 words)

	Photographs of Comet Hale-Bopp and Comet Hyakutake
		Comet Hyakutake (1996) and Comet Hale-Bopp (1997) were thebrightest comets to appear since Comet West in 1976.
		The comet was visible to the naked eye for over two months (March through May, 1997), but on the nights of March 22 through March 28, 1996, Comet Hyakutake put on aspectacular show for viewers in the Northern Hemisphere as it passed nearest to earth (0.1 a.u.).
		This comet was exceptionally large as far as comets go, but it never got particularly close to the earth for a comet passing through the inner solar system.
	www.uc.edu /geology/geologylist/cometphotos.html (1496 words)

	Students Enjoy Comet Hyakutake and Lunar Eclipse
		The excursion to see the comet was hosted jointly by Students for the Exploration and Development of Space and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.
		Even for those without telescopes, the comet was clearly visible from most spots on campus for most of the week.
		The comet is no longer visible with the naked eye from Cambridge, but can still be seen from rural locations in the early evening or pre-dawn skies near the constellation Perseus.
	www-tech.mit.edu /V116/N16/comet.16n.html (379 words)

	When Comets Break Apart
		Discussing the “sungrazing” comets, he noted that two instances,—1882 II and 1965 VIII—look as if they had split apart near aphelion (their farthest distance from the Sun), well beyond the orbit of Neptune and far above the ecliptic plane.
		“Splitting and jetting may be connected … At the moment Comet West split, the individual fragments brightened noticeably, and propelled large quantities of dust into space in the first of some dozen bursts”.
		In this sense, it may be analogous to the electrical breakdown evident in an earthquake.
	www.thunderbolts.info /tpod/2006/arch06/060119comets.htm (977 words)

	Comet hunter Tsutomu Seki's web-page[Memorable Comets<Great Comet West>] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05)
		I cannot forget the grand sight of Comet West with its three magnificent tails bursting upward from the horizon.
		It was March 1975, about 20 years ago, and the comet was in morning twilight in the eastern sky.
		This comet of 1744 is called Klinkenberg and an excellent drawing of the comet is preserved.
	www.comet-seki.net /MemComet9903_en.html (148 words)

	C&MS: 76P/West-Kohoutek-Ikemura
		Prior to the comet's entry into Jupiter's sphere of influence during the latter half of 1971, the comet moved in an elliptical orbit with a period of about 30 years and a perihelion distance of 4.78 AU.
		The comet made a very close approach to Mars on 2000 June 5, with Kenji Muraoka (Japan) giving the smallest distance between the comet and Mars as 0.04215 AU, which is equal to 3,914,000 miles or 6,303,000 kilometers.
		Although this comet has been bright enough for large amateur telescopes to see in the past, this close approach was not observable by even the largest telescopes as the comet was then situated less than 7° from the sun.
	cometography.com /pcomets/076p.html (928 words)

	Aims of the ALPO Comets Section
		West was only the third comet I had ever seen, but, with over 110 observed comets up to the present year, it still ranks as perhaps the most spectacular comet I have ever seen.
		It contained an article titled "Drawings and Photographs of Comet West (1975n)." Since I knew no one else locally who was interested in astronomy, not to mention comets, this article was a thrill to read just to see how others saw the comet.
		Although I liked David's newsletter and Don's Comet Comments that were sent out to inform observers of comet information, I think most people today rely on the WWW for up-to-date information, and that the days of newsletters are dwindling.
	www.lpl.arizona.edu /~rhill/alpo/cometstuff/aims.html (912 words)

	AAL Homepage
		With observations being made during daylight by observers with telescopes and binoculars, this comet is rated as one of the most spectacular of the 20th century.
		Unfortunately, the comet would not be enjoyed by many people outside the astronomical community, because most television stations and newspapers refused to report on the comet after the widely billed comet Kohoutek failed to reach its earlier announced expectations.
		Comet Hale-Bopp was visible to the naked eye for a period of seventeen and a half months, breaking all records for naked eye visibility of a comet.
	www.aal.lu /HIGHLIGHTS_1970-2000 (614 words)

	Comet West-Kohoutek-Ikemura
		Amongst other things, these whackos claim that NASA is hiding the facts, that the NASA probes to Mars that failed may actually be still working, and being used to watch the comet, and that if the comet hits, it will cause all sorts of disasters, including, possibly, the destruction of Mars!.
		Jesus and Mary also spoke about the alignment of the planets, which is due this year in May, and the comet will be the nearest to Mars on the 28th May, 2000.
		A lot of the energy of impact of a comet does not go into moving matter, it goes into the flash of light.
	users.bigpond.net.au /wanglese/Comet_West-Kohoutek-Ikemura.html (825 words)

	Comet Hyakutake - Wide Angle (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05)
		Comet Hyakutake was the first great comet since Comet West in 1976.
		In terms of physical size and activity, Hyakutake was a rather ordinary comet, but it put on a spectacular display because it passed extremely close to Earth, within about 0.1 astronomical units.
		Some experienced comet observers, including John Bortle and David Levy, have said that Hyakutake was the most impressive comet they have seen.
	webpages.charter.net /alsonwongweb/comet.htm (220 words)

	Comet Space Missions
		It is to investigate Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, after passing Earth in March 2005, fly by Mars in March 2007, followed by two further Earth gravity assist flybys in November 2007 and November 2009, and one or more asteroids during interplanetary cruise.
		The mother craft flew by the comet at 4,000 km, and released an impactor of weight 370 kg, made of copper and aluminium, which successfully crashed into the comet at about 10.2 km/s.
		CRAF (Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby), was to be launched 1995 and fly by comet Kopff in August 2000, after having passed by asteroid Hamburga in June 1998.
	www.seds.org /~spider/spider/Comets/c_missions.html (850 words)

	Astronet > Two Tails of Comet West
		Explanation: Here Comet West is seen showing two enormous tails that wrap around the sky.
		Comet West was a visually spectacular comet, reaching its most picturesque in March of 1976.
		Comets are really just large dirty snowballs that shed material when they reach the inner solar-system.
	www.astronet.ru:8105 /db/msg/1161998/eng (140 words)

	Comet West (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-05)
		Comet West (C/1975 V1-A) The above image of Comet West was taken in early 1976 and shows both a broad dust tail and a much narrower ion tail.
		West was the last truly naked-eye comet before the recent arrival of comet Hyakutake this year.
		Hopefully, comet Hale-Bopp will be a similarly spectacular sight during the late winter and early spring of 1997.
	www.pha.jhu.edu /~weaver/nova/west2.html (70 words)

	West, Comet (C/1975 V1)
		One of the brightest long-period comets of recent decades.
		Discovered in November 1975 by the Danish astronomer Richard Martin West (1941-), it brightened irregularly making it difficult to predict.
		It reached perihelion on Feb. 25, 1976, and a few days later, its nucleus was seen to have split into four pieces.
	www.daviddarling.info /encyclopedia/W/West_Comet.html (156 words)

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