Dr Comet

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Dr Comet

• Fred Whipples Life and Contributions

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http//www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/BruceMedalists/Wh
ipple/index.html
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Biography

• Born Fred Lawrence Whipple on November 5, 1906 on
  a farm in Iowa
• Math major at UCLA PhD. in astronomy from UC
  Berkeley where he helped map the orbit of Pluto
• Harvard College Observatory 1931-1977 meteor
  trajectories (meteors come from the solar system,
  not the interstellar universe)
• Director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical
  Observatory 1955-1973
• Died August 30, 2004 aged 97

http//lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?pp/PPALL_at_fi
eld(NUMBER_at_band(det4a08545))
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Discoveries

• Comet 36P/Whipple
• Originally Identified as asteroid 1925 QD
• Discovered to be comet August 1, 1933
• Magnitude of 13
• Tail of 3 arc minutes
• Period of 8.5 years

http//park10.wakwak.com/tsumura/comet/p_comet/pc
_gallary.htm
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Discoveries

• Asteroid 1252 Celestia
• Discovered February 19, 1933
• Main belt asteroid
• Named after Freds mother

http//home.mindspring.com/summersl/theshedobserv
atory/id9.html
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Inventions

• Radar Chaff for WWII Whipple determined that
  strips of reflective aluminum (chaff) dropped
  from Allied aircraft would confuse enemy radar.
• Whipple Shield A series of thin metallic layers
  that protect spacecraft from interplanetary dust
  and other particles.
• Moonwatch Predicting an era of artificial
  satellites, a worldwide network of amateur
  astronomers organized by Whipple formed to track
  these satellites and plot their course of orbit.

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Papers

• Icy Conglomerate Theory
• 1950 Astrophysical Journal
• Comets thin layers of dirt insulate icy core.
• Gases from comets come from the icy nucleus.
  Solar rays heat the ice, releasing gas. This
  gives us the tails we see.
• Resolved problems scientists encountered with
  abnormalities in cometary motion
• Revolutionary!

http//cfa-www.harvard.edu/thunter/comet/hyakutak
e.html
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Papers (scary math)
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Sources

• Whipple, Fred L., A Comet Model. I. The
  Acceleration of Comet Encke, Astrophysics
  Journal vol. 111, 375-395 (1950).
  (http//adsbit.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_qu
  ery?bibcode1950ApJ...111..375W)
• http//cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/pr0428.html
• http//www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/BruceMedalists/Wh
  ipple/index.html
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Whipple
• http//www.news.cornell.edu/releases/July99/Whippl
  e.bpf.htmlhttp//www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.t
  af?file/nature/journal/v432/n7013/full/432031a_fs
  .htmlcontent_filetypepdf
• http//cometography.com/pcomets/036p.html