Another for the Amateurs

Hunched at the eyepiece of his telescope early in the morning of December 29 in the Japanese city of Hamamatsu, Kaoru Ikeya suddenly grew tense. He had spotted an unfamiliar blob of light in the constellation of Ophiuchus. Five minutes later, 240 miles away in Kochi, Tsutomu Seki located the same strange object. Both checked their star maps, then hurriedly mounted their bicycles and pedaled furiously to the nearest telegraph office. There they dispatched the word to the Tokyo Astronomical Observatory. Incredibly, the same two amateur astronomers who had independently but almost simultaneously discovered 1965's famous and brilliant Ikeya-Seki comet had discovered another.

Notified by the Tokyo observatory, scientists at the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., announced the existence of the new comet. It was the 14th discovered during 1967, one more than the previous yearly record of 13. In honor of the discoverers, the Smithsonian named it Ikeya-Seki 1967n (the 14th letter in the alphabet). The new Ikeya-Seki, the Smithsonian reported, had a brightness of only the ninth magnitude and would gradually fade away without becoming visible to the naked eye.

Mad About Craters. The celestial find brought new honors to Ikeya, 24, and Seki, 37, each of whom has now discovered five comets that are wholly or partially named after him. Ikeya became obsessed with astronomy in junior high school, where he had an opportunity to peer through a small telescope one night and saw the craters of the moon and the rings of Saturn. "I was so excited," he recalls, "that I couldn't sleep nights and would stay outdoors staring at the stars. My mother was convinced that I had gone mad and talked of taking me to a doctor."

After graduation from high school in 1959, Ikeya got a job at a piano factory, where he is now a key polisher and earns $72.22 per month--enough to leave $6 per month for astronomy expenses after he contributes to the support of his mother and five brothers and sisters. Constructing his own 6-and 8-in. telescopes, Ikeya began scanning the sky in 1962 and discovered his first comet the following year.

Electric Slippers. Seki began his career by making a telescope from an old magnifying glass and a lens he found in his father's pawnshop. He was stunned by the sight of craters when he first turned his telescope on the moon, and has been star-struck ever since. Beginning his observations in 1950, he patiently peered through a variety of homemade telescopes for eleven years without finding anything new. He was on the verge of surrendering and concentrating on his $150-per-month job as guitar instructor when he spotted his first new comet in the constellation of Leo in 1962.

Both Ikeya and Seki have managed to overcome the main discomfort of their observations, the bitter midwinter chill. Seki uses a portable hair dryer to keep his hands from turning numb and wears electric slippers to keep his feet warm. After observing from an exposed rooftop platform for several years, Ikeya was rescued by his neighbors. Delighted by the honor that Ikeya had brought Hamamatsu with his discovery of Ikeya-Seki 1965, they raised $400 to convert an abandoned water tower into an observation dome near his two-room house. From this vantage point, snug and warm, Hamamatsu's hero discovered Ikeya-Seki 1967n.

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