The Corkscrew Meteor

Posted by michael on Friday January 7, 2005 @03:00PM from the knuckleball dept.

startleman writes "Over on Space.com is an interesting image of a corkscrew meteor. 'On Jan. 1, 1986, [Jimmy Westlake] was photographing [Halley's comet] through his homemade 8-inch reflecting telescope..."About one minute into the exposure, I watched a meteor zip through the field of the telescope." When he developed the roll of slide film, he was astounded that '...Crossing the tail of Halley's comet was a corkscrew meteor trail with no fewer than 25 twists in it.' Westlake's photo was never published until today. He wonders if there are others out there."

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by the way...Comet Macholz by helioquake · 2005-01-07 15:31 · Score: 3, Informative

Off topic but...Comet Macholz is found right by Pleiades ("seven" star cluster) tonight. I could manage to spot it with a pair of binocular in Boston. It's fairly fuzzy and faint, though.