The Grigg-Skjellerup Encounter

Comet Grigg-Skjellerup has an orbital period of 5.1 years, and has a production rate of only around 1% of that of Halley. It therefore provided a good target to compare and contrast with Halley. A history of Comet Grigg-Skjellerup is available. The Giotto encounter occured on July 10th, 1992.

The above image is a representation of Giotto passing through the Comet Grigg-Skjellerup. Solar wind vectors as measured by the JPA instrument are overlaid, projected onto the sky plane. Giotto was moving from upper-left to lower-right. The along-track distance between the solar wind vectors is 1790km. The image was obtained at the Anglo-Australian Telescope by Prof. Keith Mason approximately seven hours before the encounter took place.

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(Image courtesy: American Geophysical Union).