What was going on inside the Ike Projection Box, which was said to be the "invention of the century". A little past 13:00 on October 21, 1965 when Comet Ikeya-Seki passed perihelion, wide-eyed Mr. Ike, the inventor of this device, was staring at the bright projection screen in the dark box. "Is the comet appearing now?" Around the box many reporters and photographers gathered in a tense noisy atmosphere and were busily looking at the sky or talking with the main office staff on the phone.
In broad daylight Mr. Koichi Ike is staring at the
image of the sun in the projection box.
At 13:00 on October 21, 1965
"Ike-san, the comet will soon go around to the other
side of the sun." To the question in my rather irritated voice, he
responded, "Ummm, I have been tracking a comet-like shadow for some
time now, but the sun is too bright to confirm it. Look at this."
He pointed at the edge of the projected sun with the tip of a ball-point
pen. I could not see the sun itself cast by the 12.5cm refractor because
there was a hole on the sheet of paper where the sun's image was to be
projected. Only the fringe of the sun where the corona was supposed to
be seen was on the paper. "Look. You can see a glowing cloud-like
thing here, can't you? This is it. This is the corona." He was jiggling
the tip of his pen nervously unable to pinpoint the corona. "Ike-san,
if this is really the corona, it is unbelievably bright. Even if we put
a full moon here, we wouldn't be able to seec", I said.
In the back of my mind I remembered a feeble image of the
comet getting too close to the sun in early October and I could not help
becoming negative against what he was claiming. But I hadn't even dreamed
that around that time they succeeded in capturing the image of a startling
phenomenon at the summit of Norikuradake mountain and Kurashiki Observatory
in Okayama. "Seki-san, look! This white cloud is moving. It must be
really the comet!" At that very moment we heard a terrible loud noise
outside the projection box reverberating throughout heaven and earth. "Terrible!
The roof has caved in!" "A photographer fell through! Are you
alright?" It was an utterly chaotic scene.
There were so many photographers gathered on our warehouse
roof and it could not withstand their weight and collapsed making a gaping
hole on it. A photographer from RKC Kochi broadcasting station disappeared
into the hole without a trace. It was no time for observing the comet.
A hectic rescue mission ensued.
The new observing "weapon" created by Mr. Ike could
not achieve a success and ended in an utter failure. The co-discoverer
Mr. Ikeya, too, said he could not spot the comet. It seemed to have been
easier to see it earlier in the morning than immediately before the perihelion
passing later. Mr. Sadao Murayama of Ueno Science Museum in Tokyo said,
"We could see the comet clearly by blocking the sun with sunglasses
for eclipse viewing." Mr. Minoru Honda of Kurashiki Observatory said
in the newspaper article that the comet passing perihelion was a few dozen
times brighter than a full moon. In the photograph taken at the coronagraph
at Norikuradake when the comet was passing perihelion, it looked like a
serpent wrapping around the sun. A technician who took that photo told
me later, " the comet's tail at that moment showed an uneven brightness
like cigarette smoke. It was so intricate that photographs could not capture
it. That memorable photograph had been hung on the wall of the observatory
office for some time. I wonder what has happened to it since. Forty-one
years have passed since and my memories of these events have faded and
become hazy.
About one month later after Comet Ikeya-Seki passed perihelion, a foreign press reported the news from the Smithsonian Observatory that the comet nucleus had split into two. Over a long period of time since this comet was formed, the fragmentation of the nucleus might have occurred many times. A string of a large number of comets split off this comet must be moving along the 1000-year elliptical.
To continue to talk about my memories of Comet Ikeya-Seki,
I cannot exclude another strange incident.
Comet Ikeya-Seki in a morning twilight
at 5:26-27am on November 4, 1065
50mm f/2, Ektachrome 160
Photo: Koichi Ike and Tsutomu Seki
at Nii Beach , Kochi city