Official News page 7

REAL LIFE NEWS: WORK EXPERIENCE TEEN FINDS COMET

by Hazed

Work experience usually means making the tea and doing the filing, but for one high school student it meant discovering an unusual fragmenting comet.

Hannah Blyth of St John's College in Cardiff, Wales, joined a work experience program with the Faulks Telescope Project over the summer. The team was examining images of new, faint asteroids and during the summer project they found 20 new asteroids, which is impressive.

But then they discovered a "mountain-sized" fragment in the images of comet 213P Van Ness which showed it was disintegrating in a very unusual way. Astronomers were astonished and delighted, and 18-year-old Hannah was congratulated by the International Astronomical Society.

Much more fun than making the tea!

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/05/teen_tags_comet/

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