Cosmochemistry
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Articles that made the journal cover |
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MAPS 1999
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Meteoritics and Planetary Science July
1999. Vol. 34, no. 4. Cover: Engraving depicting the Great Comet of 1577,
as seen over Belgium, produced in 1578 by the Dutch printer Christopher
Plantin. The comet appeared as a naked-eye object on 1577 November 8 and was
visible for 87 days. At its brightest, the Great Comet of 1577 shone at a
magnitude of-3, and passed within 0.63 AU of the Earth. The comet's orbital
path as determined by Tycho Brahe (within his geocentric Tychonian Planetary
Model) seemed to cross the spheres of several planets, from which Brahe
concluded that the celestial spheres could not be crystalline—solid,
contiguous objects—as assumed by Aristotle, and supported the notion of a
"fluid heaven." In the present issue, Sears, Kochan and Huebner
review laboratory experiments that attempt to reproduce processes occurring
on comet surfaces.
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