[FOTZeiss] Comet Hartley 2 & Malcolm Hartley

Tue Nov 2 20:48:40 EDT 2010

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--- On Tue, 11/2/10, Ron Baalke <baalke at ZAGAMI.JPL.NASA.GOV> wrote:

> From: Ron Baalke <baalke at ZAGAMI.JPL.NASA.GOV>
> Subject: The Man Behind Comet Hartley 2
> To: HASTRO-L at listserv.wvu.edu
> Date: Tuesday, November 2, 2010, 8:23 PM
> http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-368 
> 
> 
> The Man Behind Comet Hartley 2
> Jet Propulsion Laboratory
> November 02, 2010
> 
> Over the last 40 years, Malcolm Hartley has done just about
> every
> possible job for Siding Spring Observatory's UK Schmidt
> telescope in New
> South Wales, Australia. The British-born, Scottish-educated
> Hartley has
> logged time as the 1.2 meter (3.9 foot) telescope's
> observer, processor,
> copier, hypersensitization expert, and quality controller.
> 
> On the afternoon of March 16, 1986, Hartley's job was that
> last one --
> quality control. In that role, he was the first to view
> each 36-by-36
> centimeter (14-by-14 inch) photographic glass plate after
> it had been
> exposed to the night sky. Checking for imperfections on one
> of the
> previous evening's 60-minute illuminations, Hartley came
> upon something
> that wasn't supposed to be there.
> 
> "Back then, the observations came in as negatives -- stars
> and other
> objects in the sky appeared black on a clear background,"
> said Hartley.
> "I noticed a dark haze around a trail. Trails indicate
> something that is
> traveling fast through the sky, but asteroids don't have a
> haze. So I
> thought it might be a comet."
> 
> Hartley double-checked his sighting a couple of nights
> later, then
> submitted his findings to the Minor Planet Center in
> Cambridge, Mass. A
> couple of days after that, the center issued a brief
> circular informing
> the astronomical world of the discovery of comet Hartley
> 2.
> 
> "I was very happy for a couple of days," said
> Hartley."Every scientist
> wants to discover something and it's a fantastic feeling.
> There was even
> a mention in the local paper, the Coonabarabran Times."
> 
> On the world's stage, having a comet named after you is
> certainly
> unique. But not so much in the small town of Coonabarabran
> -- which they
> say comes from the local Aboriginal word for 'inquisitive
> person.' It is
> the closest town to the Warrumbungle Range and Siding
> Spring Mountain
> and the Anglo-Australian Observatory.
> 
> "There are several other colleagues at Siding Springs who
> have
> discovered comets," Hartley said. "Robert McNaught has
> discovered over
> 50, and I don't think he's ever been mentioned in the
> Times. It's a
> rural farming community, and while there are amateur
> astronomers in the
> area, finding comets is not really a big deal."
> 
> Hartley went on to discover or co-discover 10 comets with
> the UK Schmidt
> telescope, and with each, he would feel an initial rush of
> excitement.
> But in 2002, the Anglo-Australian Observatory retrofitted
> its Schmidt to
> perform multi-object spectroscopy, essentially halting all
> astrophotography with the telescope and ending any future
> possibility
> for comet discovery. Hartley, who never was directly tasked
> with finding
> comets, continued to work the telescope's galaxy surveys.
> Comets, it
> seemed, had become little more than a historical footnote
> in his career.
> That is, until he got a call from a science magazine.
> 
> "At the beginning of last year, a reporter emailed and said
> that the
> EPOXI mission changed its target and now it was going to go
> to Hartley
> 2," said Hartley. "I didn't even know Hartley 2 was one of
> the two
> comets under consideration."
> 
> Hartley 2 was definitely on NASA's very short list of
> potential comet
> targets. The only problem with Hartley 2 was it would take
> more than two
> years of extra deep-space cruising to get there. So the
> only other
> candidate on the short list, the similar-sized comet
> Boethin, was
> selected. That is, until it disappeared. Scientists
> theorize that comet
> Boethin had broken into non-traceable fragments. This
> situation left
> NASA's short list as a list of one -- comet Hartley 2.
> 
> So Malcolm Hartley did what anybody would do who has a
> namesake comet
> that was just selected as a target for a NASA comet flyby,
> after the
> previous selection had disappeared. He thanked the
> reporter, logged off
> his computer and wondered what "his comet" would look like.
> Whatever
> that was going to be, Hartley was sure he would find out
> from the
> comfort of his living room. Then NASA called.
> 
> "I've never been involved with a space mission," said
> Hartley. "I had
> never visited JPL or any NASA facility for that matter. So
> this is all
> new to me. I am very grateful you have asked me to come and
> witness
> this. It is an experience very few people have had
> before."
> 
> Exactly once before -- of all the approximately 3,800 known
> comets, four
> have been imaged closeup by spacecraft. And of those four,
> only Swiss
> astronomer Paul Wild (pronounced "Vilt") was alive to see
> his comet
> visited <http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=1>.
> And while
> Wild witnessed the launch of NASA 's Stardust spacecraft
> from Cape
> Canaveral, Fla., in 1999, he watched the close-up images of
> his comet
> from the comfort of his living room in 2003. (Wild passed
> away in 2008).
> Hartley will see his comet from JPL's mission control
> room.
> 
> "When I discovered the comet in 1986, I never envisaged
> that I would
> come to the location where the mission was run, to see it
> up-close and
> personal," said Hartley, who was a boy when JPL was
> starting up.
> 
> Not surprisingly, the 63-year-old astrophotographer also
> has some
> thoughts on the mission to his comet.
> 
> "You went to Tempel 1, but then you reconfigured the
> spacecraft for the
> extended mission," said Hartley. "That's pretty clever
> stuff that you've
> done. That's the kind of science that's really interesting.
> To be able
> to do something extra on top of the successful mission you
> mounted at
> Tempel 1, it's really special."
> 
> EPOXI is an extended mission that utilizes the already
> "in-flight" Deep
> Impact spacecraft to explore distinct celestial targets of
> opportunity.
> The term EPOXI is a combination of the names for the two
> extended
> mission components: the Extrasolar Planet Observations and
> Characterization (EPOCh), and the Hartley 2 flyby, called
> the Deep
> Impact eXtended Investigation (DIXI). For more information
> about EPOXI,
> visit: http://www.nasa.gov/epoxi <http://www.nasa.gov/epoxi > and
> http://epoxi.umd.edu.
> 
> JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology
> in Pasadena,
> manages the EPOXI mission for NASA.
> 
> DC Agle 818-393-9011
> Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
> agle at jpl.nasa.gov
> 
> 2010-368
>