Astronauts Take Pictures Of Comet Uv Images Are Impossible To Get On Earth

Discovery’s astronauts beamed down faint, fuzzy pictures of the Hale-Bopp comet Saturday from an ultraviolet telescope.

It’s the first time the $500,000 telescope has flown in space.

If everything works, scientists said the telescope will provide the first complete, head-to-tail ultraviolet images of the comet. Ultraviolet rays are invisible from Earth because of the distorting effects of the atmosphere.

The receding comet is so close to the sun as seen from Earth that the astronauts had to use the space shuttle’s 50-foot robot arm to shield the small telescope from all the glare.

They hung the robot arm overboard near the side hatch window - the only window without ultraviolet protection - and then set up the small telescope inside the cabin.

Astronaut Stephen Robinson reported that the robot arm shaded the telescope from the sun, but a tremendous amount of light was being reflected off Earth. “We’ll just have to see how that works,” he said.

Too much glare of any sort would make it difficult if not impossible for Robinson to track Hale-Bopp and collect good data. He had trouble seeing the comet at times.

“We’re taking a risk there. We know it. But God gave us this geometry, and we’re doing our best to combat it with ingenuity,” said Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, which developed the telescope.

The comet is fainter than it was back in March and April, “so it won’t knock your socks off,” Stern said. Indeed, Mission Control had to dim the lights in order to make out the grainy, white and gray images coming from Discovery.

On the positive side, Stern said, the comet is going through a dynamic period right now in which it’s turning off so to speak.

“A comet just doesn’t turn off like a light switch,” he said. “It coughs and spits and sputters, and there are a lot of physics in that process we don’t understand.”