Periodic comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 has broken into more than 30 different pieces as it approaches the sun. This comet was discovered on 1930 May 2 by Arnold Schwassmann and Arno Wachmann at the Hamburg (Germany) observatory. It was the third periodic comet discovered by this pair and the 73rd comet to be recognized as periodic. All of the observed fragments in 2006 will pass relatively close to the Earth during the interval May 12 through May 28 but none will pass closer than 5.5 million miles. These passages of the fragments past the Earth offer astronomers an excellent opportunity to examine the cometary breakup process and hopefully these observations will shed some light on just why some comets disrupt..
	On the morning of May 8, 2006 at 1:07 AM EDT this image was taken of the comet's C fragment after it had passed by M57, the Ring nebula to the right. Image scale is 3 arc-seconds per pixel,, taken with Orion ED80 refractor, 25 second exposure. Position is 23 arc-minutes east of M57 and moving east at around .09 arc second every second!
							Alignment on the comet nucleus produces this more detailed comet image against the background of trailed star images as the comet travels eastward in the sky. This was obtained by stacking 30 images of 25 sec each over a 50 minute period.
							See the movie of Comet 73p taken right here from the Space Hut!
	Comet 17P Holmes- November 2007
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