Comet Research
In 1966, Dr. Roemer relocated from the Naval Observatory in Flagstaff to the University of Arizona in Tucson to continue her work on comets and asteroids. She recovered dozens of comets during her career and conducted most of her research at the U of A's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory until her death in 2016. In addition to conducting research, Dr. Roemer was also a professor where she taught various topics in astronomy, including comets.
Dr. Roemer was well known for her prolific "recoveries" of known short period comets (comets that take less than ~20 years to go around the Sun). Unlike today where many short period comets can be followed all the way around the Sun, in the past these comets would be lost once they got too far away. Dr. Roemer would "recover" these comets as they made their way back towards the Sun by searching the area where they were predicted to be, looking for a faint dot moving ever so slightly relative to the background stars. This was often a quite challenging task since it is difficult to predict exactly where or how bright a comet will be, and the longer it has been since a comet was last seen, the harder the task becomes. Without Dr. Roemer's work, many comets may have been lost for decades; her measurements of their brightnesses at large distances are still used by astronomers today.
Dr. Roemer frequently shared her comet research with the public. For many years, she contributed monthly reports titled "Comet Notes" to a scientific journal called the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. In these reports, she provided details about newly discovered and recovered comets. She also held lectures on comets and asteroids for the general public.
Dr. Roemer also attended several conferences about comets and networked with fellow astronomers doing similar work. By getting involved in scientific communities and frequently publishing her research, Dr. Roemer became one of the leading authorities on all things related to comets.
To the right are hand written notes about Comet Wirtanen, including a diagram and observation notes. Below is an abstract of a paper that Dr. Roemer wrote at the Naval Observatory in 1963 about the mass and nuclear dimensions of Comet Wirtanen.
