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The Story of a Comet Hunter's Life

My 50 years with Comets

Part 38: Strange stories of Comet Ikeya-Seki 2

    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 seec", 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



Copyright (C) 2019 Tsutomu Seki.