Comet Hyakutake is a comet that was discovered in January 1996 and passed very close to the Earth in March of that year. It was one of the closest cometary approaches to the Earth in the last 200 years. The comet became very bright in the night sky, and, as a result, it was seen by a large number of people around the world. The comet temporarily upstaged the long-awaited Comet Hale-Bopp, which was approaching the inner solar system at the time, although Hyakutake was only at its brightest for a few days. Scientific observations of the comet led to several notable discoveries. Most surprising to cometary scientists was the discovery of X-ray emission from the comet, the first time a comet had been found to be emitting X-rays. This emission is believed to be caused by ionised solar wind particles interacting with neutral atoms in the coma of the comet. The Ulysses spacecraft also unexpectedly crossed the comet's tail at a distance of more than 500 million km from the nucleus, showing that Hyakutake had the longest tail yet known for a comet. Hyakutake is a long period comet. Before its most recent passage through the solar system, its orbital period was about 15,000 years, but the gravitational influence of the giant planets has now increased this to 72,000 years.
Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Hyakutake
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1859: Constantin von Tischendorf found the Codex Sinaiticus, a 4th-century uncial manuscript of the New Testament, in a monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai in Egypt. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Sinaiticus)
1862: Bacardi, one of the world's largest rum producers, was founded as a small distillery in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacardi)
1899: The Philippine-American War broke out. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine-American_War)
1945: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin met at the Yalta Conference. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference)
1957: USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, logged her 60,000th nautical mile, matching the endurance of the fictional Nautilus described in Jules Verne's novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nautilus_%28SSN-571%29)
_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:
"If one took no chances, one would not fly at all. Safety lies in the judgment of the chances one takes. That judgment, in turn, must rest upon one's outlook on life. Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed." -- Charles Lindbergh (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh)
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