Flickerings in outer darkness. (Halley's comet flares up; Chiron is not an asteroid but a huge comet)

From: The Economist (US) | Date: March 9, 1991 | Copyright information

SEVENTY years before its scheduled return, Halley's comet is putting in a brief impromptu reappearance. It has not deviated from the orbit Edmund Halley set out for it in the early 18th century: it is well beyond the orbit of Saturn on the outward leg of its 76-year cycle from the inner solar system to the outer. But observers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile have recently seen it flare up to 300 times its usual brightness.

Far from the sun, in the ...

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