Comet Flop

Forty years ago this week, Czech astronomer Lubos Kohoutek was talking to the people with the best view of a comet he’d discovered a few months earlier — the astronauts aboard the Skylab space station.

KOHOUTEK: It is a great pleasure for me to greet you as the first human beings studying a comet from outer space.

Comet Kohoutek had been touted as the comet of the century — a visitor that would outshine everything except the Moon at Christmas of 1973. Instead, the comet fizzled. It was barely visible, and few members of the general public ever saw it. Even now, astronomers keep Kohoutek in mind when they discuss the possible appearance of a new comet, such as ISON, which was scheduled to make its closest pass by Earth today.

Despite the bad PR, Kohoutek was a scientific hit. Astronomers organized a worldwide campaign to study it with space- and ground-based instruments.

By far the best view came from Skylab. The final flight to the space station had been timed so the crew could st