Comet Offers Glimpse Of Early Solar System

9/22/96

John Fleck
Journal Staff Writer
When it reaches its brightest next spring, Comet Hale-Bopp will offer scientists a rare window back in time to the formation of the solar system, according to NASA scientist Jay Bergstralh.
Bergstralh heads a NASA group that will use four rocket flights at White Sands Missile Range to loft telescopes above Earth's atmosphere to observe Hale-Bopp next March and April.
The scientists hope to pin down details of the comet's chemical composition by studying ultraviolet light it emits.
That should provide information about the early days of the solar system, as planets and comets were forming from a primordial cloud.
"In a sense, we're looking at chemical fossils of the origin of the solar system," Bergstralh said.
Because Earth's atmosphere blocks ultraviolet light, astronomers need to get their instruments into outer space to do their observations.
The rockets will fly hundreds of miles straight up, giving the telescopes five minutes to observe the comet before falling back to Earth and landing by parachute at White Sands.
While comets are common, Hale-Bopp is a one-of-a-kind for this type of research because it is so bright, said Alan Stern, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., who is lead scientist on one of the four NASA rocket flights.
"We've got the mother of all comets," Stern said.