From: utzoo!kcarroll Newsgroups: net.space Title: Article-I.D.: utzoo.2117 Posted: Wed Jun 2 16:40:35 1982 Received: Wed Jun 2 16:40:35 1982 Two interesting pieces of information, garnered from the March 1982 issue (Vol 24 #3) of, a journal published by the British Interplanetary Society: (1) p.124 : NEW UK SATELLITE ; This article describes a satellite to be flown by Britain as part of a 3-nation cooperative mission scheduled for Shuttle launch in 1984. The mission is called the Active Magnetic Particle Tracer Explorers (AMPTE), and the other two nations involved are Germany and the US. The purpose of the mission is to measure magnetic and plasma processes in the Earth's magnetosphere. In order to carry this out, the German satellite will periodically release barium ions into space. "One release of barium ions, planned near Christmas 1984, will create what will appear from the ground for some 30 minutes as an artificial comet, interacting with the solar wind in much the same way as a real comet. The releases will be visible mainly from North and South America where a suitable chain of ground observing stations and spotter planes can be made available." Depending on the amount of barium released and the level of magnetic activity at the time, the resulting display could be quite spectacular (especially if release occurs at night). It could also give prospective comet-watchers a sample of what's coming two years later, when Halley's makes its rounds. (2)p.125 : COMET-SUN COLLISION ; Speaking of comets... Apparently, on 30 Aug, 1979, a sun-grazing comet actually hit the surface of the Sun, scattering debris throughout the corona. The event was detected by the USAF P78-1 satellite, using a coronagraph which creates an artificial eclipse of the sun by means of an occulting disc, which blocks out the image of the solar disc while allowing the image of the corona to be detected. The energy released in the collision was estimated to have been 10**30 ergs; Naval Research Laboratory researchers are checking ground based observatories (presumably their past records) for evidence of the effect of the collision on the Sun. Although the collision occurred more than 2 years ago, it was only recently discovered, as "the relevant data has only now been released for analysis".