Bill Haley and His Asteroid
Published on Oct 22, 2007 at 2:20 pm.
No Comments.
Filed under asteroids, music.
This weekend was the peak of the annual Orionid Meteor Shower. I had meant to blog about that, but I got busy and never got around to it. A lot of others wrote about the meteor shower, though, so I don’t feel so bad. Instead, I thought that I’d write about something (slightly) related that no one else would likely be writing about today.
The Orionids are debris shed by 1P/Halley (Halley’s Comet). Halley’s Comet was not the first comet every discovered, but it was the first whose orbit was studied well enough for its return to be predicted. That accomplishment is credited to the astronomer Edmund Halley, who in 1705 determined that several comets seen over the previous centuries were, in fact, the same comet and that it would return in about 1757. Sadly, Halley died in 1742 and did not live to see the comet return (which it did in 1758 to 1759, one year after his prediction due to influences of Saturn’s gravity). Each time by the Sun, the comet loses some material, including dust grains and other small particles. These small particles continue to orbit the Sun with orbits very similar to that of the comet. The particles, meteoroids we call them, spread out along the orbit, and every year in mid October as Earth passes through this swarm of meteoroids we get a meteor shower. The meteors appear to radiate from the northern part of Orion, so we call this the Orionid Meteor Shower. It is generally a fairly good meteor shower.
But, others have written about the meteor shower. I wanted to mention the comet, and its name. It is called Halley’s Comet, even though Halley did not see it upon its return, because he correctly predicted its return. Growing up, I had always been taught in school that the name of this most famous of comets was Halley’s Comet, pronounced “Hay-lee”, with a long “a”. This is the standard pronunciation of the comet here in the United States. Unfortunately, it is probably wrong. The correct pronunciation is a bit in doubt, but it is generally pronounced “Ha-lee”, rhyming with the word “valley.” Certainly, the rules of English pronunciation don’t call for a vowel such as “a” to be a long sound when it precedes two consonants, such as the two “l”s. I have been told by some, though, that Halley should actually be pronounced “Hall-ee”, with the first syllable sounding like the word “hall.” So, why do most everyone that I meet in the US pronounce this as “Hay-lee”?
Well, for one thing, Americans sometimes come up with our own unique way of pronouncing words, and often that pronunciation has little to do with how the words really should be pronounced or even following the conventional rules for English pronunciation. But, in this case, the real reason might be simply a matter of happenstance. Some years ago, there was a musician by the name of Bill Haley, and he had a band called The Comets. The band was originally The Saddlemen, but reportedly Bill Haley decided to change the name to play off of the similarity of his name to that of Edmund Halley, and to take advantage of the occasional mispronunciation of Halley’s name. Bill Haley and the Comets, though, became famous for their song Rock Around the Clock. They recorded several other songs, quite a few of which I recognize, but Rock Around the Clock is perhaps their most famous, and it was the theme song for the popular television show Happy Days. Of course, Bill Haley’s name was pronounced “Hay-lee”, in keeping with the standard rules for pronunciation. But, the connection between his name and The Comets naturally got more people to pronouncing Halley’s Comet as if it were Haley’s Comet. So, here in the United States, we are stuck with the wrong pronunciation.
January 20, 1999, observers Jana Ticha and Milos Tichy found a dot in an image taken at the Klet’ Observatory in the Czech Republic. This dot was an asteroid, later given the provisional designation 1999 BH5. This asteroid is rather small, and its orbit is inclined about 12 degrees with respect to the ecliptic. It orbits the Sun every 1601 days (4.38 years) in an orbit ranging from 2.35 AU from the Sun out to about 3.00 AU. In most respects, this asteroid, 1999 BH5, is perfectly ordinary.
But, in February, 2006, the asteroid was given the official number and name of 79896 Billhaley, in commemoration of the singer Bill Haley. The date that the name was bestowed onto the asteroid was timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Bill Haley’s death in February, 1981.
So, while Bill Haley might not actually have a comet named for him, he does have an asteroid! Now, that is an interesting turn, going from the musical group Bill Haley and the Comets to the asteroid 79896 Bill Haley.
-Astroprof
Photo credit Wikimedia
Orbit Diagram credit NASA, JPL
