A recent article from Discovery.com, “Will Comet ISON Be Another Kohoutek PR Disaster?”
Comet Kohoutek is the star of my new novel THE NIGHT OF THE COMET. Discovered in 1973, Kohoutek was hyped as the “comet of the century,” and it ignited a brief worldwide craze for all things cometary.
This year’s Comet ISON has also been called another comet of the century, a “dream comet.” It was spotted last September by a couple of amateur astronomers, and is expected to be at its brightest around Thanksgiving-time. Here’s its projected orbit:
Recently, however, astronomers have begun scaling back their predictions for ISON. It might not really be another comet of the century, they caution, wary of being burnt again as they were by Kohoutek, which turned out to be one of the most disappointing comets in history, a complete dud.
But no matter how big or small of a showing it makes, astronomers say Comet ISON will still be a treasure trove of science, an “extraordinary event.”
Says one astronomer, Casey Lisse of the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University:
“We shouldn’t be scared of the K-word.”