Comet Cometh: Hartley 2 Visible in Night Sky

The Comet Cometh: Hartley 2 Visible in Night Sky
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
October 19, 2010

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-339

Backyard stargazers with a telescope or binoculars and a clear night's
sky can now inspect the comet that in a little over two weeks will
become only the fifth in history to be imaged close up. Comet Hartley 2
will come within 17.7 million kilometers (11 million miles) of Earth
this Wed., Oct. 20 at noon PDT (3 p.m. EDT). NASA's EPOXI mission will
come within 700 kilometers (435 miles) of Hartley 2 on Nov. 4.

"On October 20, the comet will be the closest it has ever been since it
was discovered in 1986 by Australian astronomer Malcolm Hartley," said
Don Yeomans, head of NASA's Near-Earth Object Office at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. and a member of the EPOXI
science team. "It's unusual for a comet to approach this close. It is
nice of Mother Nature to give us a preview before we see Hartley 2 in
all its cometary glory with some great close-up images less than two
weeks later."

Comet Hartley 2, also known as 103P/Hartley 2, is a relatively small,
but very active periodic comet that orbits the sun once every 6.5 years.
From dark, pristine skies in the Northern Hemisphere, the comet should
be visible with binoculars as a fuzzy object in the constellation
Auriga, passing south of the bright star Capella. Viewing of Hartley 2
from high ambient light locations including urban areas may be more
difficult.

In the early morning hours of Oct. 20, the optimal dark sky window for
mid-latitude northern observers is under two hours in length. This dark
interval will occur between the time when the nearly-full moon sets at
about 4:50 a.m. (local time) and when the morning twilight begins at
about 6:35 a.m.

By October 22, the comet will have passed through the constellation
Auriga. It will continue its journey across the night sky in the
direction of the constellation Gemini.

EPOXI is an extended mission that utilizes the already "in-flight" Deep
Impact spacecraft to explore distinct celestial targets of opportunity.
The name EPOXI itself is a combination of the names for the two extended
mission components: the extrasolar planet observations, called
Extrasolar Planet Observations and Characterization (EPOCh), and the
flyby of comet Hartley 2, called the Deep Impact Extended Investigation
(DIXI). The spacecraft will continue to be referred to as "Deep Impact."

JPL manages the EPOXI mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate,
Washington. The University of Maryland, College Park, is home to the
mission's principal investigator, Michael A'Hearn. Drake Deming of
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., is the science lead
for the mission's extrasolar planet observations. The spacecraft was
built for NASA by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.

Images and videos of comet Hartley 2 from both amateur observers and
major observatories are online at:
http://aop.astro.umd.edu/gallery/hartley.shtml .

For more information about EPOXI visit http://epoxi.umd.edu/ .

DC Agle 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.


2010-339

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Happy days *and*...
Starry, starry nights !

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Paine Ellsworth

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