Comet Hunting Made Easy

How's this for an exotic occupation: hunting comets. Searching the heavens with a large telescope in the dark of night looking for an elusive prey. These days, though, it's simpler than that. All you really need is a good, fast Internet connection. At least that's how Rainer Kracht, Germany's foremost comet hunter, goes about his hobby. Piecing together pictures from the Euro-American space probe "Soho" -- sent to Earth and posted on the Web  -- Kracht, and other amateur comet hunters search for the tiny points of light that might indicate a comet. The probe photographs the sun around the clock as part of a scientific effort to better understand our local star and the pictures have been streaming to Earth for almost a decade. The scientists, however, are too busy analyzing data on radioactive eruptions on the surface of the sun to bother looking for comets. Which is where Kracht comes in. He has already found 139 comets -- just behind British comet hunter Mike Oates, who has discovered 143. Now, you can join in too.

Author of "Memory and Identity" Rushed to Hospital

One day after making his longest public appearance since an early February illness that required hospitalization, Pope John Paul II on Thursday was once again rushed to the hospital. The Vatican is saying that the Pope has suffered a relapse of the flu and was hospitalized for additional tests on his health. But the flu was the excuse used in early February, and according to reports from that illness, the Pope was actually near death.  This time, Vatican officials have said that a medical bulletin on the 84-year-old pontiff's health will be issued on Friday morning.

The Pope's renewed bout with illness comes just one day after the 227-page "Memory and Identity," his fifth book, went on sale on Wednesday (available on Amazon on Friday). The book has raised some hackles in Europe, particularly among those who feel that the pontiff made a comparison between abortion and the Holocaust  and called abortion "legal extermination." Others were offended by the Pope's characterization of gay marriage as part of "a new ideology of evil"  and that it represents a threat to society.