And it's also a spectacle for science because we always have new instruments to use. By comparing light produced by the comet in the infra-red part of the spectrum, McFadden hopes to calculate the size of grains of dust in the comet's coma. Cometary dust, she points out, is partly made of bitty hunks of rocks and partly bitty pieces of various carbon compounds, including ethane, methane and acetylene. By combining her results with those of researchers who are observing the comet in other wavelengths, scientists will gain basic information on the size and shape of the comet. That, in turn, will help drive the understanding of conditions during the solar system's formation.
Comets spend most of their time in one of two areas.
One final reason why I should care about Hale-Bopp. It's not just its size, which portends strong signals and easy observation. It's also that Hale-Bopp is coming on the heels of Hyakutake.