[meteorite-list] Comet Hunter Carolyn Shoemaker To Speak At Cornell On April 21

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:50:26 2004
Message-ID: <200204121530.IAA08146_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/April02/shoemaker.comets.ssl.html

Comet hunter Carolyn Shoemaker to speak at Cornell April 21

FOR RELEASE: April 11, 2002

Contact: Susan S. Lang
         Cornell University News Service
Office: 607-255-3613
E-mail: SSL4_at_cornell.edu


ITHACA, N.Y. -- Carolyn S. Shoemaker, the world's most successful
living "comet hunter," will speak at Cornell University Sunday, April
21, at 1 p.m. in the David L. Call Alumni Auditorium, Kennedy Hall.
The talk is free and is open to the public.

The subject of the talk, which is aimed at science educators, will be
asteroid and comet collisions within the solar system. The talk is
sponsored by NASA's Comet Nucleus Tour (Contour) and the central and
southern sections of the Science Teachers Association of New York
State. Contour, which is scheduled for launch July 1, is managed by
the Applied Physics Laboratory at the Johns Hopkins University, with
Cornell's Department of Astronomy leading the science team.

Shoemaker, who has discovered more than 300 asteroids and 32 comets,
is probably best known for her 1993 co-discovery of the
Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet, which in 1994 collided with Jupiter. The
collision gave planetary scientists the most spectacular and most
widely studied solar system event in history, as each of the comet's
23 individual fragments collided with the giant planet over a number
of days.

Today, astronomers have identified a large population of near-Earth
asteroids and comets and are aware of more than 160 impact
structures, such as craters, on Earth where these objects have
crashed into our planet. A new period of solar system exploration is
beginning, Shoemaker says, thanks to new methods of searching the
skies and studying objects.

Shoemaker, who estimates she puts in 100 search hours for each comet
she finds, studied history and political science, taught high school
and raised three children before she launched her career as a comet
hunter at age 51. She continues to search for asteroids and comets
and to study ancient impact structures at Lowell Observatory in
Flagstaff, Ariz.

For her comet discoveries, she has won the Rittenhouse Medal of the
Rittenhouse Astronomical Society, and in 1990 she was awarded an
honorary doctorate of science by Northern Arizona University in
Flagstaff. She is the widow of the late astronomer Eugene Shoemaker,
who as chief scientist at the United States Geological Survey Center
of Astrogeology played a leading role in organizing geological
activities for the lunar landings of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Received on Fri 12 Apr 2002 11:30:14 AM PDT