The University of Chicago has a news release today, "University of Chicago instruments to reach comet, Mars in same busy week." And Astrobiology Magazine has an interview today with the Stardust mission's principal investigator, Donald Brownlee, "Extraterrestrial Capture." Brownlee was at the NASA/JPL news conference yesterday, about which Reuters put out a wire story late yesterday, "NASA Probe Heads for Close Encounter with Comet," and the Rocky Mountain News has an article today, "Wild chase gooses scientists."

NASA headquarters issued a news release today, "NASA Spacecraft Has Shields Up," reporting that, at 48 hours from the 2:40am EST January 2nd flyby of 81P/Wild 2, the Stardust spacecraft "has officially entered a comet's coma," which means particles could be encountered now at high velocity, so the vehicle has been turned to fly with its Whipple Shields facing forward into the onslaught.

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A Houston Chronicle article about the Stardust mission yesterday described comets as "puffy white objects [most of which] orbit the sun far beyond Pluto." But that's nothing compared with the tall tale told today at the San Francisco Chronicle about how "The mother of all Quadrantids" — referring to 2003 EH1 — is "the dim burnt-out core of an ancient star":

“ Last month, astronomer Peter Jenniskens . . . predicted that the source of the meteor shower would eventually be confirmed as the dim burnt-out core of an ancient star that must have exploded in violent brilliance more than 500 million years ago. Now, astronomers on a mountaintop in Chile have just spotted that object climbing high in the southern Milky Way, bang-on exactly where Jenniskens said it should be. The remnant is the equivalent of what's known as a 23rd magnitude star, shining far too faintly for even the best amateur-grade telescopes to pick up. Too dull and puny to be classified as a comet, the object is now only an asteroid, a rock about 2 miles in diameter that is orbiting the sun between Earth and Jupiter. When it was a star that exploded, astronomers theorize, debris flew into solar orbit to create what observers on Earth took to calling the Quadrantid meteor shower. ”

See A/CC's item yesterday for links to articles about what's believed to be the real Quadrantids story.

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