Wikijunior talk:Solar System/Comets

References for Comets
Plese list below any reference works used to create the content of this wikibook module for comets:


 * comet
 * Comet (1985); Sagan, Carl and Druyan, Ann; ISBN 0-394-54908-2; Random House, Inc.

Umm....
Well, sorry to break up the process a bit but a few of these articles just simply needed to be re-written. I have done that and am in the process of placeing them. Please understand that the articles where neither 1) Age-apropriate or 2) Well written (i.e. not consice, clear, well flowing)

But a lot of the original writing is intact

Please understand that this article was still under construction when it was nominated for proofreading and was not ready for this step. This has been fixed and the organization is complete. Thank You!!

-Basejumper123 20:40 (UTC) October 31, 2005

I think you have done this in precisely the right order. You did the reorganization and rewriting and the reorganization phase and are now working on fact-checking. I think the article had reached the point when I nominated it for proofreading where it did not need any more material added. It did need reorganization after several hands had touched it. I think you are making good progress, though certain portions are still a little awkward. And, of course, the language will have to be brought down to grade level. It will probably get more concise in that step, as well, because redundancy causes run-on sentences and higher grade-level scores (and lower readability scores).

As for the fact-checking, please follow the fact-checking guidelines referenced in the proofreading plan and put in citations for each fact you check. This will make it easier for everyone who needs to review the work later, when we finally gather the whole thing up and print it.

As always, if you have suggestions for ways to improve the whole proofreading process, please make them.

Thanks

--SV Resolution 00:31, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

References and Sources
Great Comet Resource: Solar Views.com

Good Info Here, but slightly advanced Comet Quarterly Website

As always, great info from wikipedia! Wikipedia Comet Article

On a comet's structure Encyclopedia.com

On a comet's origin Encyclopedia.com

Good Kid's Refrence Starchild.com

Good Comet Descriptions

Acctually A Comet site for kids! Comets And Meteor Showers

For Kids Beginner's Comet Info

-Basejumper123 2:20 (UTC) November 1, 2005

Having started some copyediting...
Hello. Having come to take up Basejumper123's plea for help, I've begun some copyediting, but, as the comments I've hidden in the text indicate, I'm wondering whether some concepts such as orbits and gravity need to be cross-referenced and/or mentioned. Please advise.

Thanks, David Kernow 06:14, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

SOHO and the number of comets
I think this section is very misleading and gets the wrong point across. SOHO wasn't even designed to explore and identify comets, but instead was strictly for solar observations. That some comets were seen with this instrument is more a side effect that has its own group of hobbyists that monitor image updates from this probe with almost religious fervor.

There are only 160 comets that have been identified to have a regular orbit around the sun. The original wording of this paragraph makes this clear, but the attempt to simplify this paragraph has butchered the meaning so far that the meaning has changed significantly. There are thousands, perhaps millions of comets going around the sun. SOHO has detected over 1000, most of which either burned up by crashing into the sun or went on a hyperbolic orbit that caused them to leave the solar system entirely. Those that orbit with a regular pattern are a part of the 160 mentioned earlier, not the 1000 that were seemingly identified by SOHO.

I've stayed out of this edit cycle because I feel that other similar manglings of the meanings of these sections have occured. This is just close to an extreme. I'm also having a tough time trying to simplify the wording I've used earlier, so I'm leaving that to others who want to do this work. I know it isn't easy, and I'm also willing to "wait and see" what the results will be. I am curious as well why the close-up of Hailey's Comet was removed from this module, although that is easy to add back in. --Rob Horning 16:17, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Seeing Comets In The Sky
I changed this section as well. Some background material:

The last "Great Comet" was actually "The Great January Comet", which appear about the same time that Hailey's Comet also appeared in the sky. Because of the news media attention on Hailey's Comet, many people alive at that time thought they were seeing Hailey's Comet instead, including many people in the popular news media (they havn't changed much, have they?) The most recent return of Hailey's Comet in 1986 was so disappointing in terms of what you could see from the Earth that most people weren't even aware that it came by. Unless you were born a few years before 1911, you have never seen a Great Comet before except in photographs or paintings.

Edmund Hailey and even Kepler had the good fortunes of being around when several major Great Comets appeared in the sky, and formed the basis for some of the current scientific theories about the motion of the planets. The story about how Hailey disovered that the comet named after him was a recurring comet is even more interesting.

The issue of the roughly one Great Comet every hundred years has nothing to do with orbits (except for Hailey's Comet that has a period of 76 years... it is getting dimmer however with every pass near the Sun and is no longer considered a Great Comet by this standard.) There are thousands of chunks of ice (the core of a Comet) that are falling toward the Sun all of the time, and using a statistical average about one of these every century gets close enough to the sun to become a spectacular comet. The Great January Comet was visible on Times Square in New York City, so stictly speaking you don't need a telescope to see one of these.

The 20th Century was pretty much devoid of Great Comets, and there are no current candidates for any future ones at the moment either. In 1974 it was thought that Comet Kohoutek might become a Great Comet due to its very large orbit (period of about 13,000 years) and the fact that during the initial observations it appeared to be much brighter than other similar objects at the same distance. As it came close to the Sun, however, it turned out to be a disappointment and was only visible through telescopes. Its peak as a comet also happened when it was on the opposite side of the Sun from the Earth, so it was very difficult to see as well because of how close to the sun it was visually. This is not considered a Great Comet either, although it is an interesting one and does count as one of the 160 regular period comets that have been named and discovered.

On Great Comets, usually you can see both tails, dust and gas. In fact, there have been some comets with even more than two tails. One comet that Chinese astronomers recorded is thought to have four tails and the tails were visually shaped like a swastika in the sky. It is thought this may have been the orgin of this symbol as well. A good thing that didn't happen during the middle of WWII.

I need to go back to the public library where I got the book, but Carl Sagan's book titled "Comets" is an excellent reference book about this topic. The ISBN number is listed at the top of this discussion page. All of this information is explained in that book in much more detail. --Rob Horning 04:41, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Back!
Hi there, im back from a rather tough couple months at school and im ready to finish this section off! -Basejumper123 3 Feburary, 2006

Finished
This Page is more or less clean as of 10 may, 2006 I just performed a final spelling and grammar check and it appears to be done, if you edit this page further, please spell-check your own work before submitting, thank you Basejumper123 22:31, 10 May 2006 (UTC)