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From: alle@ihuxb.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Halley's Comet Will Be Brighter This Time
Message-ID: <382@ihuxb.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 12-Oct-83 07:00:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihuxb.382
Posted: Wed Oct 12 07:00:59 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Oct-83 11:06:29 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, Il
Lines: 24

Pasadena, Calif. [AP] - Halley's Comet will be five to six times brighter
than previously predicted when it swings by Earth again in 1986, two
researchers say.
     Charles S. Morris and John G. Bortle said at a recent cometary
astronomy conference at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that previous
brightness calculations were inaccurate because they were based on
observations from 1910, the last time the comet streaked through the
solar [sic] system on its 76-year orbit.
     Scientists initially thought Halley's [comet] would be barely
visible to the naked eye, but Morris and Bortle predict it could be
as bright as Polaris, the star that marks magnetic north.
     Astronomers who tracked Halley's [comet] in 1910 weren't as expert
in the technicalities fo celestial observation, particularly measuring
light, and modern astronomers who used their data didn't consider those
limits.
     Halley's will pass inside Pluto's orbit in late 1985, pass closest
to the sun on Feb. 9, 1986 and should remain visible through April, 1986,
when it heads back into the stars for another 76 years.

*************************************
>From the Chicago Tribune - October 9, 1983.

Allen England at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Naperville, IL 
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