[AZ-Observing] Edgar Wilson awards

     Here's an official press blurb about this year's comet-hunting awards,
copied from the Minor Planet Maling List.

\Brian

===============================================================================

To: mpml@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Minor Planet Mailing List)
From: Ron Baalke <baalke@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2003 14:04:24 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: {MPML} 2003 Comet Awards Announced


http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/pr0317.html

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Release No.: 03-17
For Release: July 7, 2003

2003 Comet Awards Announced

Cambridge, MA - An annual award of several thousand dollars for
discoveries of comets by amateur astronomers has just been announced for
the fifth consecutive year.

The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), part of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
has announced the recipients of the 2003 Edgar Wilson Award for the
discovery of comets by amateurs during the calendar year ending June 10.
The award was set aside as part of the will bequeathed by the late
businessman Edgar Wilson of Lexington, Kentucky, and administered by the
SAO. The following five discoverers will receive plaques and a cash award:

   * Sebastian F. Hoenig of Dossenheim, Germany, for his visual discovery
     of comet C/2002 O4 on 22 July 2002.

   * Tetuo Kudo of Kikuchi, Kumamoto, Japan, and Shigehisa Fujikawa of
     Mitoyo, Kagawa, Japan, for their independent visual discoveries of
     comet C/2002 X5 on 12 and 13 December 2002.

   * Charles W. Juels of Fountain Hills, Arizona, and Paulo R. C.
     Holvorcem of Campinas, Brazil, for their joint charge-coupled-device
     (CCD) electronic-camera discovery of comet C/2002 Y1 on 28 December
     2002.

Comet C/2002 X5 is observer Fujikawa's sixth credited comet discovery. His
first comet discovery came in 1969, more than three decades ago. He is the
only winner this year credited with previous comet discoveries.

Co-discoverer Tetuo Kudo is a well-known astrophotographer in Japan who
started searching for comets some years ago. He discovered C/2002 X5 while
he was waiting to finish an exposure.

Comet C/2002 O4 (Hoenig) is the first visual amateur comet discovery from
Germany since C/1946 K1 (Pajdusakova-Rotbart-Weber). Hoenig also has
detected nearly 20 comets in images from the Solar and Heliospheric
Observatory (SOHO) satellite. More than 600 comets have been found by SOHO
over its 8 years of operation.

Comet C/2002 Y1 (Juels-Holvorcem) was discovered in the first night of
using a wide-field (2.3 x 2.3 degrees) camera on a 5-inch refractor to
search for bright objects. Juels and Holvorcem collaborate over the
internet with the help of "fast" ADSL connections, which make it easy to
communicate and transfer images in near-real time between their homes in
Arizona and Brazil, respectively.

At the beginning of the 17th century, Johannes Kepler thought there were
more comets in the skies than there were fish in the seas. Many other
people then still clung to the view of malevolent visitors bent on
mischief prowling through the earth's atmosphere, whereby comets were seen
as harbingers of doom, creators of earthquakes, disasters, famine, defeat
in battles and deaths of kings. Going back to ancient times, the sudden
appearance of comets, their enormous size, and their just-as-sudden
departures raised superstitious fears wherever they were observed.

Hundreds of comets were observed and recorded before the invention of the
telescope in 1609, and the number of discoveries soared when
better-quality telescopes came into use in the 18th century. Armed with
small instruments that pale in comparison to ones available to amateur
astronomers today, the race to discover new comets and gain recognition
and fame began.

Nicknamed the "Ferret of Comets" by the King of France in the 1760s,
Charles Messier became one of the most famous comet hunters of all time.
He just missed the recovery of Halley's comet in December 1758 at its
first predicted return, but for the next fifteen years, nearly all comet
discoveries were made by Messier. It was rumored that he may have been
even more upset over the discovery of a comet by a rival while he was
attending his dying wife than he was over her death.

Nearly two hundred years have passed since the comet discoveries of
Messier. Today amateur astronomers continue to discover new comets that
may bear their names for eternity. Fighting increasing light pollution and
competition from sophisticated professional observatories, the challenges
and rewards have become even greater. There have been numerous comet
awards over the centuries, but the Wilson Award is currently the largest
publicly known award.

In 2002, there were seven recipients of the Award. Of the 25 Award
recipients in the first five years, 15 have been for visual discoveries,
eight for discoveries from CCD images, and one for a discovery from a
photograph. The countries with the most recipients so far are the United
States (5), Japan (6), and Australia (4). In years when there are no
eligible comet discoverers, the Award is made instead to amateur
astronomers judged by the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT)
to have made important contributions toward observing comets or promoting
an interest in the study of comets.

NOTE TO EDITORS: Images associated with this press release are available
at: http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/pr0317image.html

Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center
for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA
scientists organized into six research divisions study the origin,
evolution, and ultimate fate of the universe.

For more information:

http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/special/EdgarWilson.html
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/Headlines.html
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iauc/06900/06936.html

David Aguilar, Director of Public Affairs
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Phone: 617-495-7462 Fax: 617-495-7468
daguilar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Christine Lafon
Public Affairs Specialist
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Phone: 617-495-7463, Fax: 617-495-7016
clafon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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