English Island

[[Image: Lulin-Sky-Survey/ck07n030_20070711.png|500|Comet Lulin at discovery, the truth is here...]] 

Earlier this month a newspaper reported a discovery by professional star-gazer Lin Chi-sheng of the Lulin Observatory in Nantou, Taiwan. Lin had discovered (Comet) C/2007-N3 -- a massive lump of ice and rock "kilometers" in diameter. On Feb. 27, 2009, the comet is scheduled for a near earth fly-by, getting as close as 60 million kilometers away from our planet and becoming visible to the unaided human eye. The newspaper went on to claim that this discovery was the first such find by local astronomers -- and that Taiwan is now "on the map" in the global astronomical community.

We salute Lin Chi-sheng and congratulate the entire team at the Lulin Observatory in the central county of Nantou on the discovery of the "Lulin Comet." The patience and devotion required for thousands upon thousands of hours of sky-watching -- mostly without reward -- is highly commendable. But, it would be nice if we gave full credit where credit is due.

Many in Taiwan cheered the news of a local find. The tone of the report and even the headline of the newspaper article were filled with nationalist sentiment, "Local Star-Gazer Discovers Comet," it declared. But buried a bit toward the back of the report came a surprising detail: the find would not have happened without the aid of Taiwan's arch-rival mainland China.

Astronomers from China and Taiwan have increased collaboration in recent years. Since many observatories in China do not possess as high-powered telescopes as we have in Taiwan, Chinese astronomers do their part in a deal of cooperation by selecting areas of the sky for the Nantou-based Lulin Observatory to watch and photograph. Lin himself actually told reporters it was Chinese participants who first detected the "Lulin Comet" and a smaller near-earth asteroid (NEA) in the photographs.

The highlight of this story is one of successful collaboration. For once, Taiwan and China set aside their half-century old political dispute and worked together to actually assist humankind. This wonderful story of cooperation, however, was mainly lost in the self-congratulatory tone of the local media.

Instead of trumpeting the help of the Chinese, some local papers buried the China connection at the end of the article and did not include this info in headlines or decks. It would seem disingenuous for the Taiwan reports to label the find as "local" when the reality is that without major Chinese help, the discovery would never have been made.

A mature person working on a problem welcomes all whose ideas contribute to a solution, and upon finding one, dishes out praise accordingly and unstintingly. So should it be with mature nations. As the planet shrinks ever smaller under the effects of globalization, cooperation and collaboration will become the watchwords of the future, not individualism or jingoism. Taiwan's media should endeavor to praise cooperation and refrain from downplaying the contributions of others.

-- China Post, August 1st, http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/2007/08/02/116720/A-comet.htm

Well, there will be always the right persons and the heaven who know the truth, an interesting story always have some odd things. Comet of Politic may be a better name than Comet Lulin. Those are not important, personally, I'm happy to see they call me "astronomer"

On the night of July 15 of that year (1862), Lewis Swift, an amateur astronomer in Marathon, New York, was out with his telescope looking for Comet Schmidt, a fairly bright new comet he had read about in the newspaper. Soon he found a fuzzy patch of light in the north sky which he took to be the comet, fainter han expected. But three nights later, Horace Tuttle, at Harvard Observatory, saw the same object and realized it was not Comet Schmidt.  After Tuttle annouced the discovery, Swift hastened to make his claim, which, fortunately for him, was accepted.

Your first reaction might be to think poor Tuttle unfairly got second billing in this comet's name.

Horace Tuttle had already discovered several comets and would discover at least one more very important one - Comet Tempel-Tuttle, the parent of the Leonid meteor showers and storms. But Tuttle, after what some called heroic service in the Civil War, was dismissed from the Navy years later, when it was discovered that he had embezzled a small cial success, Horace Tuttle's fate was to die in 1923 with only $70 to his name and to be buried in an unmarked grave.

... Great Kaouru Ikeya, who took a factory job at the age of 14 to help support his family but eventually saved enough money to build his own inexpensive telescope. He searched the pre-dawn skies before work for 335 hours over 109 nights in more than a year before finding his first comet. His co-workers were so proud of him that they put together a gift of $300 to help him continue his comet hunting. ...Ikeya proceeded to discover another comet the next year (1964) and then, in 1965, one of the great comets of the century -- the sungrazer Ikeya-Seki. In 1966, Ikeya found a rather dim comet and then, at the end of 1967, another comet that also ended up being called Ikeya-Seki. In 1965, Ikeya had found the great comet just 15 minutes before Tsutomu Seki; in 1967, he beat Seki by no more than 5 minutes!

The many Japanese amateurs' skll and intensity is demonstrated by the events of October 5, 1975. That night, three of them independently discovered Comet Mori-Sato-Fujikawa within 70 minutes of each other. Later that night, five of them independently discovered Comet Suzuki-Saigusa-Mori within half an hour of each other. Hiroaki Mori is the only person ever to have discovered two comets visually in one night.

– P.127, Comet of the century, Fred Schaaf,  Copernicus, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.