Make a Comet Pop: Tales from Atmospheric Scientist
The last years of the 20th century gave us a nice crop of naked-eye comets—brilliant pinwheels to decorate the night sky. Not only are comets beautiful, they also are frozen leftovers of the early solar system, recording what was here and what it was like when the Sun and the planets formed. A comet or asteroid probably killed the dinosaurs, but long before that, comets may well have been the source of the water and gases that now are the air and the oceans and that make possible life, forests, you and me, and whatever you ate for lunch. Just for you, we'll gather all the ingredients for a comet and whip up a special recipe of comet-on-a-stick!
Tim Livengood is a storyteller and a planetary astronomer to boot. He began both careers as a child when he ran into a wall while racing to watch television coverage of Apollo 11's liftoff from the Moon, leaving him with an interest in space science, a scar, and a story to tell about it. The scar has faded, but the stories have not, and neither has Tim's interest in the universe. Tim creates and tells original stories wrapped around a kernel of truth, and kernels of truth held together by story
