posted 10-16-2020 04:58 PM               

Space Cover #580: Comet Kohoutek

Comet Kohoutek received worldwide attention after it returned to make a sweep around the Sun right on schedule after it prior appearance 76 years earlier. This cover was send to Dr. Fred Whipple for his signature and he not only signed it, but enclosed a hand written note on the stuffer which, in and of itself is historic!

From the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory:

Dr. Fred Lawrence Whipple, was one of the last giants of 20th century astronomy. He was Phillips Professor of Astronomy Emeritus at Harvard University and a Senior Physicist at SAO. A discoverer of six comets, Whipple may be best known for his comet research.

Five decades ago, he first suggested that comets were "icy conglomerates," what the press called "dirty snowballs." His dirty snowball theory caught the imagination of the public even as it revolutionized comet science. A 2003 survey by The Astrophysical Journal showed that Whipple's 1950 and 1951 scientific papers on the "icy conglomerate" model were the most cited papers in past 50 years. Whipple's comet work continued for a lifetime.

The comet was named for the observer in Germany who discovered it; Lubos Kohoutek, who signed this cover from Hamburg, Germany.

One of the more interesting covers returned to me came from a J.H. Rush from the Chamberlin Observatory in Denver, CO. He added the interesting cachet himself to a blank cover sent to him.

posted 10-17-2020 06:28 AM               

I remember as a teenager in Wichita, Ks., the Wichita Astronomical Society had a Kohoutek viewing in the wee hours of the morning out along some country road east of town. I seat belted my Edmund 4-1/4" telescope into the back seat of Dad's big-as-a-barn Ford Galaxie (yes, that's how Ford spelled it) and went.

Everyone's reaction was "ho-hum" because Kohoutek appeared as just a smudge instead of the magnificent vision that had been predicted for it. And as I left, the back end of the Galaxie slid down into the muddy ditch next to where I had parked...

posted 12-30-2020 12:26 PM               

If I recall, I believe that Czech astronomer Dr. Lubos Kohoutek, the comet discoverer, was a special guest lecturer aboard the the Queen Elizabeth 2 for a special "once in a lifetime" comet observation cruise. But during the ocean voyage, the seas got so rough with many passengers getting sick as the early December weather foiled most of the onboard comet viewing.

He signed the ship cover along with a few others depicted here, all for Kohoutek cachet events related to Skylab 4 at Cape Canaveral, Houston, and Washington, D.C. Note his visit to NASA's Johnson Space Center on a Dec. 28th space cover while at the Mission Control Center when talking to the orbiting Skylab (SL-4) crew.

Another signature shown is of Dr. Steve Maran, head of the Advanced Systems and Ground Operations Branch of the Laboratory of Solar Physics & Astrophysics at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He served as the leading manager of NASA's nationwide Operation Kohoutek.

An historical first, though, for Comet Kohoutek was that it was the first comet to be photographed and studied from space by the SL-4 and Soyuz 13 crews and did provide some useful scientific data and studies by the orbiting Skylab crew.

A couple of months later, the New York Times reported that the much publicized
Comet Kohoutek "is proving a disappointment to astronomers, if not a fizzle."

By the way, Ray, I really do like the Fred Whipple signed-inscribed cover along with the cool J.H. Rush signed and hand-drawn cachet to record his own "live" Comet Kohoutek observation from a Denver observatory in Colorado. That's unique!