Tuesday, March 5, 2013

You Asked For It!

A couple posts ago I talked briefly about the upcoming comets, and about Comet Kohoutek from the Winter of '73, that resulted in my first published image of a predawn Kohoutek before perihelion (close approach to the sun).  One of the comments asked for the image that had appeared in the Daily Iowan, the University of Iowa student paper.  I had run across the clipping recently, but of course couldn't locate it on short notice.  Then I found the DIs on-line archive and the only question was the date.  So I sat down and strolled down memory lane reviewing the news of the day and of Campus life on my sophomore year.

Finally I found it!  It ran on 29 November, 1973, right above Pogo and next to an ad for "Midnight Cowboy".  The headlines of the day include gaps in the recently-subpoenaed White House tapes, a recently-applied smoking ban in campus classes, and the firing of football coach Frank Lauterbur who had gone 0-11, the lousiest team in Iowa history (which I had season tickets for!).  The image of the comet is mediocre at best, perhaps due to the digitizing process, or perhaps due to the original image, but looks like a fuzzy smudge, which is what most comets look like!  The label refers to an upcoming "Elixir" issue talking about the sky, which I've not looked for yet, might have to do that if time permits.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

nice stroll down memory lane. thanks for sharing this article.