[meteorite-list] Astronomers Puzzled Over Comet LINEAR's Missing Pieces

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:46:25 2004
Message-ID: <200105172017.NAA09303_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

EMBARGOED UNTIL: 2:00 p.m. (EDT) Thursday, May 17, 2001
 
CONTACT:
Donna Weaver
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD 21218
(Phone: 410-338-4493, E-mail: dweaver_at_stsci.edu)
 
Hal Weaver
The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218
(Phone: 410-516-4251, E-mail: weaver_at_pha.jhu.edu)
 
 
PRESS RELEASE NO.: STScI-PR01-14
  
ASTRONOMERS PUZZLED OVER COMET LINEAR'S MISSING PIECES
 
Astronomers analyzing debris from a comet that broke apart last summer
spied pieces as small as smoke-sized particles and as large as
football-field-sized fragments. But it's the material they didn't see
that has aroused their curiosity. Tracking the doomed comet, named
LINEAR, the Hubble telescope and the Very Large Telescope in Chile
found tiny particles that made up the 62,000-mile-long dust tail and
16 large fragments, some as wide as 330 feet. But the telescopes didn't
detect any intermediate-sized pieces. If they exist, then the
fundamental building blocks that comprised LINEAR's nucleus may
be somewhat smaller than current theories suggest.
 
To read more, click on:
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/2001/14
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/latest.html
http://hubble.stsci.edu
 
Related information is available on:
http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/home01/may01/linear.html and
http://www.nasa.gov/today/index.html
 
There are no new Hubble pictures, but previously released
Hubble Space Telescope images of Comet LINEAR's breakup
are available on the Web at:
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/2000/26/index.html and
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/2000/27/index.html
 
The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is operated by
the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc.
(AURA), for NASA, under contract with the Goddard Space Flight
Center, Greenbelt, MD. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of
international cooperation between NASA and the European Space
Agency (ESA).
 
Received on Thu 17 May 2001 04:17:13 PM PDT