Amateur radio operators can use meteor showers to enhance  propagation on several ham bands.  6 meters is the band of choice for meteor scatter because the reflected radio signals are of longer duration and greater signal strength than at higher frequencies.

Details on using meteor scatter for amateur communications can be found on the " Meteor Scatter " page.

19 Oct 2001 : METEOR ALERT: "The annual Orionid meteor shower peaks this weekend. Sky watchers in either hemisphere who venture outdoors between 3 a.m. and dawn on Sunday morning will see 10 to 20 meteors per hour as tiny bits of debris from Halley's comet disintegrate in Earth's atmosphere. [full story]"  NOAA

Orionid Radiant : 

  Click to enlarge Image  NOAA

Above: Observers at mid-northern latitudes can find the radiant of the Orionid meteor shower in the southeastern sky at 3 a.m. local time on October 21st. Click here for a southern hemisphere sky map.

                _____________________________________________

Looking for Information concerning Sharon Lombardi's cosmic discovery. Original information welcomed.

_______________

" SOHO is a unique satellite operating from a permanent vantage point 1.5 million kilometers ahead of the Earth in a halo orbit around the L1 Lagrangian point. SOHO Will observe the Sun continuously for at least two years.  Previous satellites functioning as solar observatories were periodically interrupted as Earth `eclipsed' the Sun." NASA

Coronagraph images at the SOHO web site are updated every 30 minutes.  You  get to see the solar images at the same time that the scientists at NASA and the European Space Agency do.   Amateurs are in the lead for discovering new comets in real-time. 

Approximately one new comet a week is discovered using the SOHO images.

If you think you've found something, first review the basic criteria for a discovery before forwarding the details to scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Center.  

Send your discovery to: doug@sungrazer.nascom.nasa.gov

Will I win a prize and have the comet named after me? 

 Well .... By convention, comets discovered in SOHO data are named after the spacecraft rather than the astronomer.  

Both real-time and archival images are accessible at the SOHO web site

_______________

The SOHO Mission

SOHO is designed to study the internal structure of the Sun, its extensive outer atmosphere and the origin of the solar wind.

Structure of the Sun

"The computer generated image represents an acoustic wave resonating in the interior of the Sun. Solar waves move through the Sun like sound waves through the air. Temperature, composition, and motions deep in the Sun influence the oscillation periods and yield insights into conditions in the solar interior, whose distinct regions are shown on one face of the cutaway. Three instruments will be devoted to this new science called helioseismology: in the same way that seismologists can learn about the Earth's interior by monitoring waves caused by earthquakes, so too can solar scientists learn about the interior of the Sun by monitoring wave oscillations."  Photo and text  NASA

Solar Atmosphere

"This image of the solar atmosphere at a temperature of about 100,000 degrees was obtained with an ultraviolet spectrometer flown in NASA'S Solar Maximum Mission. In the left-hand image, the false colors show the intensity of light emitted by three-times ionized carbon (C IV) at a wavelength of 1548.15 Å. The large loop over the horizon is maintained by magnetic field lines that join two regions of opposite magnetic polarity in the underlying photosphere. In the right-hand image, the line-of-sight velocity is color coded so that approaching material is shown as blue and receding material is shown as red. SOHO will obtain images like this showing density and velocity fields at many different temperatures."  Photo and text NASA

Solar Wind and Corona

"The Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, extends to many times the diameter of the Sun. But the corona can only be seen well in visible light from the earth during eclipses of the Sun by the Moon because it is millions of times fainter than the photosphere, the visible surface of the Sun. Because of its high temperature, the coronal plasma is highly ionized, and the corona is thus visible in a variety of emission lines. Most of these spectral lines fall outside the visible spectrum; in order to observe in those in the ultraviolet and X-ray wavelength ranges which are absorbed by the earth's atmosphere, we must observe from space.

The Sun continuously blows off a magnetized plasma known as the solar wind which results from heating." Photo and text  NASA

Images including the Sun and comets are found on the "Photo Album" page.

_______________

Where did all these sungrazing comets come from ?

"The origin of these sungrazing comets  appear to be fragments of a single giant comet that broke apart near perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) long ago.  It is speculated that the parent might have been a bright comet seen by the Greek astronomer Ephorus in 372 BC. Ephorus reported that the comet split in two."

" Splits may have occurred again and again, producing the Kreutz sungrazer family (named after the nineteenth-century German astronomer who studied them in some detail). The sungrazers share an elliptical orbit that brings some of the fragments less than 50,000 km from the Sun."

Return to top of Page                                                             Home

Go to Photo Album page