Comet Kohoutek

C/1973 E1 ( Kohoutek ), often simply referred to as Comet Kohoutek is a long-period comet that passed through the inner solar system in 1973.

The comet was discovered on March 7, 1973 by Czech astronomer Luboš Kohoutek at the Hamburg Observatory by comparing sky photographs from the area of the constellation Hydra. He reached perihelion on 28 December 1973. Comet found both in the media and in the professional world wide attention, but became much weaker than expected. So the tabloid BILD wrote on June 20, 1973: "Giant comet hurtling to the Earth to ... " According to a report of the popular science magazine " Bild der Wissenschaft " NASA postponed the launch of the Skylab 3 crew to their capacities instead of to devote observation of the comet.

Research results

At the time of its discovery, the comet was about 600 million kilometers from Earth, which is probably the biggest discovery distance. He reached the orbit of the Earth on November 19, 1973, flew around the sun at a distance of only 21 million kilometers, half as far away as the sun closest planet Mercury. However, its path is not within the same plane as the trajectory of the earth. This plane crossed the comet until December 27th. The two-dimensional view of Earth and comet train is only a rough idea. Near the Sun, the comet reached its greatest speed of 112 kilometers per second. The distance between the comet and the Earth was approximately in the order of magnitude as between the Sun and Earth, namely 150 million kilometers. Due to this distance the actual brightness evolution for observers on Earth remained well below the predictions. On January 2, 1974, the comet crossed on the way from the sun back the earth's orbit and the middle of 1974 he left the inner solar system.

Kohoutek was the first comet was observed by crews of the Space Stations: There were Skylab 4 and Soyuz 13 Based on calculations of its orbit, it is assumed that it will only pass through again in 75,000 years the inner solar system. Already in an interview in 1973 by its discoverer had estimated this time to 80,000 years.

Many astronomers suspected originally that the comet belongs to the Oort cloud. However, his observation did not confirm this and suggest rather to the fact that it is a Kuiper belt object in C/1973 E1 ( Kohoutek ).

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