He's out of this world

What do you do when you see a shooting star in the sky Probably squeeze your eyes shut and make a wishu00a0Sixteen yearold Prafull Sharma however prefers to trace its origin On July 14 this year Sharma discovered the SOHO 2333 a fragment of comet Machholz u00a0ldquoHappy Independence Day Marsquoamrdquo are Sharmarsquos pleasantries before letting loose a volley of information on his recent discoveryu00a0 ldquoThe comet is a planetary body which comes out of the Oortrsquos Cloud where all comets are bornrdquo Sharma begins in a crisp explanatory tone adding that there are two types of comets mdash periodic and nonperiodic The Class 12 student of Ahlcon Public School in Mayur Vihar New Delhi discovered the comet by analysing the data of NASA and European Space Agencyrsquos Solar and Heliosperic Observatory SOHO New Delhibased teenager Prafull Sharma says he has often missed out on comet discoveries by a few minutes due to a slow Internet connection The only things Sharma needs for his discovery are a computer to log on to SOHOrsquos website and download images from the coronograph and the device to view the corona or the surrounding layer of the sun ldquoThe coronograph has two plates that click a photograph every 12 and 20 minutes respectively I download the images in JPEG form view all the images one after the other with an interval of 02 seconds between each of them to form a video The comet can be seen from the periphery of the disc as it moves towards the sun Once you spot a comet you have to locate its X and Y coordinates and submit the report to the SOHO moderatorrdquo explains Sharma u00a0Here Sharma slows down though we understand there is much to tell ldquoThe comet on the image is only 1 or 2 pixels in size which is very very tinyrdquo says Sharma who joined the programme this January SOHO 2333 his recent discovery Pic courtesyYPrafull Shama This is the first time Sharma has discovered a comet but the teenager already has a few asteroids 85 supernovas and 55 variable stars in his discovery kittyu00a0In 2007 SPACE Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators started a club in Sharmarsquos school and he signed up for four modules spread across two yearsu00a0 ldquoIn the first year they brushed up our basics in astronomy and we observed open skies in Jewar in UP and Nuh in Haryana There I learnt the concept of constellations stars and cometsrdquo raves Sharma who went to Patna in 2009 to see the total solar eclipse and Kerala in 2010 to follow the annual solar eclipse along with All India Asteroid Search Camp a collaboration between International Astronomical Search Collaboration IASC and SPACE ldquoRenowned comet hunter Terry Lovejoy introduced me to this project after we interacted online Initially I was frustrated because there were 100 people working on discovering comets Twenty nine comets have been discovered by the Chinese so farrdquo says Sharma who switches on his computer at 710 am every day and logs on to the SOHO system to downloads images and reads them for comet presence At 730 am he leaves for school and returns at 230 pm ldquoAfter that I leave for my IIT JEE coaching classes and return at 8 pm to revise lessons and then it is time to go supernova huntingrdquo says Sharma who has tried to get his friends on board too ldquoThey do it for a day or two and then lose patience Also the Internet connection in India is really slow I often lose out on a discovery by a few seconds Other comet hunters are really fastrdquo says Sharma in a serious tone One night Sharma downloaded some images and glanced at them without much attention The next morning when he studied them two pixelsize points attracted his eye ldquoBoth were comets but one was discovered 14 minutes before my submission by a Chinese comet hunter Liang Liurdquo says Sharma who wants to take up aerospace engineering and specialise in jet propulsion when he grows up After this discovery Sharma ranks 83rd out of 85 comet hunters on SOHO ldquoOther students unwind by watching television I turn to astronomyrdquo Sharma who is the third Indian to discover a SOHO comet u00a0