Every few decades an impressive comet arrives in the Earth's
neighborhood and demands our attention. In this free public
lecture, Dr. Donald K. Yeomans will discuss what can be expected
of Comet Hale-Bopp, why comets have had such an impact on life
on Earth, and what space missions are being planned to study
these visitors from the very edge of our solar system. Dr.
Yeomans is a Senior Research Scientist and Supervisor of the
Solar System Dynamics Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
This group is responsible for tracking all the planets, natural
satellites, comets and asteroids in the solar system. He
provided the accurate position predictions that led to the
recovery of comet Halley at Palomar Observatory on Oct. 16,
1982, as well as the predictions that led to the successful
flybys of Halley by five international spacecraft in March,
1986. He also provided the position predictions for asteroids
951 Gaspra in Oct. 1991 and 243 Ida in Aug. 1993 that helped the
Galileo spacecraft make the first close-up im