COMETS

Newton showed that the bodies known as "comets," or hirsute stars, obey the law of gravitation; but it was by no means certain that the individual of the species observed by him in 1680 formed a permanent member of the solar system. The velocity, in fact, of its rush round the sun was quite possibly sufficient to carry it off for ever into the depths of space, there to wander, a celestial casual, from star to star. With another comet, however, which appeared two years later, the case was different. Edmund Halley, who afterwards succeeded Flamsteed as Astronomer Royal, calculated the elements of its orbit on Newton's principles, and found them to resemble so closely those similarly arrived at for comets observed by Peter Apian in 1531, and by Kepler in 1607, as almost to compel the inference that all three were apparitions of a single body. This implied its revolution in a period of about seventy-six years, and Halley accordingly fixed its return for 1758-9. So fully alive was he to the importance of the announcement that he appealed to a "candid posterity," in the event of its verification, to acknowledge that the discovery was due to an Englishman. The prediction was one of the test-questions put by Science to Nature, on the replies to which largely depend both the development of knowledge and the conviction of its reality. In the present instance, the answer afforded may be said to have laid the foundation of this branch of astronomy. Halley's comet punctually reappeared on Christmas Day, 1758, and effected its perihelion passage on the 12th of March following, thus proving beyond dispute that some at least of these erratic bodies are domesticated within our system, and strictly conform, if not to its unwritten customs (so to speak), at any rate to its fundamental laws. Their movements, in short, were demonstrated by the most unanswerable of all arguments—that of verified calculation—to be calculable, and their investigation was erected into a legitimate department of astronomical science.[Pg 89]

This notable advance was the chief result obtained in the field of inquiry just now under consideration during the eighteenth century. But before it closed, its cultivation had received a powerful stimulus through the invention of an improved method. The name of Olbers has already been brought prominently before our readers in connection with asteroidal discoveries; these, however, were but chance excursions from the path of cometary research which he steadily pursued through life. An early predilection for the heavens was fixed in this particular direction by one of the happy inspirations of genius. As he was watching, one night in the year 1779, by the sick-bed of a fellow-student in medicine at Göttingen, an important simplification in the mode of computing the paths of comets occurred to him. Although not made public until 1797, "Olbers's method" was then universally adopted, and is still regarded as the most expeditious and convenient in cases where absolute rigour is not required. By its introduction, not only many a toilsome and thankless hour was spared, but workers were multiplied, and encouraged in the prosecution of labours more useful than attractive.

The career of Heinrich Olbers is a brilliant example of what may be done by an amateur in astronomy. He at no time did regular work in an observatory; he was never the possessor of a transit or any other fixed instrument; moreover, all the best years of his life were absorbed in the assiduous exercise of a toilsome profession. Born in 1758 at the village of Arbergen, where his father was pastor, he settled in 1781 as a physician in the neighbouring town of Bremen, and continued in active practice there for over forty years. It was thus only the hours which his robust constitution enabled him to spare from sleep that were available for his intellectual pleasures. Yet his recreation was, as Von Zach remarked,[241] no less prolific of useful results than the severest work of other men. The upper part of his house in the Sandgasse was fitted up with such instruments and appliances as restrictions of space permitted, and there, night after night during half a century and upwards, he discovered, calculated, or observed the cometary visitants of northern skies. Almost as effective in promoting the interests of science as the valuable work actually done by him, was the influence of his genial personality. He engaged confidence by his ready and discerning sympathy; he inspired affection by his benevolent disinterestedness; he quickened thought and awakened zeal by the suggestions of a lively and inventive spirit, animated with the warmest enthusiasm for the advancement of knowledge. Nearly every astronomer in Germany enjoyed the benefits of a frequently active correspondence with him, and his communications to the scientific periodicals of the[Pg 90] time were numerous and striking. The motive power of his mind was thus widely felt and continually in action. Nor did it wholly cease to be exerted even when the advance of age and the progress of infirmity rendered him incapable of active occupation. He was, in fact, alive even to the last day of his long life of eighty-one years; and his death, which occurred March 2, 1840, left vacant a position which a rare combination of moral and intellectual qualities had conspired to render unique.

Amongst the many younger men who were attracted and stimulated by intercourse with him was Johann Franz Encke. But while Olbers became a mathematician because he was an astronomer, Encke became an astronomer because he was a mathematician. A born geometer, he was naturally sent to Göttingen and placed under the tuition of Gauss. But geometers are men; and the contagion of patriotic fervour which swept over Germany after the battle of Leipsic did not spare Gauss's promising pupil. He took up arms in the Hanseatic Legion, and marched and fought until the oppressor of his country was safely ensconced behind the ocean-walls of St. Helena. In the course of his campaigning he met Lindenau, the militant director of the Seeberg Observatory, and by his influence was appointed his assistant, and eventually, in 1822, became his successor. Thence he was promoted in 1825 to Berlin, where he superintended the building of the new observatory, so actively promoted by Humboldt, and remained at its head until within some eighteen months of his death in August, 1865.

On the 26th of November, 1818, Pons of Marseilles discovered a comet, whose inconspicuous appearance gave little promise of its becoming one of the most interesting objects in our system. Encke at once took the calculation of its elements in hand, and brought out the unexpected result that it revolved round the sun in a period of about 3-1/3 years.[242] He, moreover, detected its identity with comets seen by Méchain in 1786, by Caroline Herschel in 1795, by Pons, Huth, and Bouvard in 1805, and after six laborious weeks of research into the disturbances experienced by it from the planets during the entire interval since its first ascertained appearance, he fixed May 24, 1822, as the date of its next return to perihelion. Although on that occasion, owing to the position of the earth, invisible in the northern hemisphere, Sir Thomas Brisbane's observatory at Paramatta was fortunately ready equipped for its recapture, which Rümker effected quite close to the spot indicated by Encke's ephemeris.

The importance of this event can be better understood when it is[Pg 91] remembered that it was only the second instance of the recognised return of a comet (that of Halley's, sixty-three years previously, having, as already stated, been the first); and that it, moreover, established the existence of a new class of celestial objects, somewhat loosely distinguished as "comets of short period." These bodies (of which about thirty have been found to circulate within the orbit of Saturn) are remarkable as showing certain planetary affinities in the manners of their motions not at all perceptible in the wider travelling members of their order. They revolve, without exception, in the same direction as the planets—from west to east; they exhibit a marked tendency to conform to the zodiacal track which limits planetary excursions north and south; and their paths round the sun, although much more eccentric than the approximately circular planetary orbits, are far less so than the extravagantly long ellipses in which comets comparatively untrained (as it were) in the habits of the solar system ordinarily perform their revolutions.

No great comet is of the "planetary" kind. These are, indeed, only by exception visible to the naked eye; they possess extremely feeble tail-producing powers, and give small signs of central condensation. Thin wisps of cosmical cloud, they flit across the telescopic field of view without sensibly obscuring the smallest star. Their appearance, in short, suggests—what some notable facts in their history will presently be shown to confirm—that they are bodies already effete, and verging towards dissolution. If it be asked what possible connection can be shown to exist between the shortness of period by which they are essentially characterised, and what we may call their superannuated condition, we are not altogether at a loss for an answer. Kepler's remark,[243] that comets are consumed by their own emissions, has undoubtedly a measure of truth in it. The substance ejected into the tail must, in overwhelmingly large proportion, be for ever lost to the central mass from which it issues. True, it is of a nature inconceivably tenuous; but unrepaired waste, however small in amount, cannot be persisted in with impunity. The incitement to such self-spoliation proceeds from the sun; it accordingly progresses more rapidly the more numerous are the returns to the solar vicinity. Comets of short period may thus reasonably be expected to wear out quickly.

They are, moreover, subject to many adventures and vicissitudes. Their aphelia—or the farthest points of their orbits from the sun—are usually, if not invariably, situated so near to the path either of Jupiter or of Saturn, as to permit these giant planets to act as secondary rulers of their destinies. By their influence they were, in[Pg 92] all likelihood, originally fixed in their present tracks; and by their influence, exerted in an opposite sense, they may, in some cases, be eventually ejected from them. Careers so varied, as can easily be imagined, are apt to prove instructive, and astronomers have not been backward in extracting from them the lessons they are fitted to convey. Encke's comet, above all, has served as an index to much curious information, and it may be hoped that its function in that respect is by no means at an end. The great extent of the solar system traversed by its eccentric path makes it peculiarly useful for the determination of the planetary masses. At perihelion it penetrates within the orbit of Mercury; it considerably transcends at aphelion the farthest excursion of Pallas. Its vicinity to the former planet in August, 1835, offered the first convenient opportunity of placing that body in the astronomical balance. Its weight or mass had previously been assumed, not ascertained; and the comparatively slight deviation from its regular course impressed upon the comet by its attractive power showed that it had been assumed nearly twice too great.[244] That fundamental datum of planetary astronomy—the mass of Jupiter—was corrected by similar means; and it was reassuring to find the correction in satisfactory accord with that already introduced from observations of the asteroidal movements.

The fact that comets contract in approaching the sun had been noticed by Hevelius; Pingré admitted it with hesitating perplexity;[245] the example of Encke's comet rendered it conspicuous and undeniable. On the 28th of October, 1828, the diameter of the nebulous matter composing this body was estimated at 312,000 miles. It was then about one and a half times further from the sun than the earth is at the time of the equinox. On the 24th of December following, its distance being reduced by nearly two-thirds, it was found to be only 14,000 miles across.[246] That is to say, it had shrunk during those two months of approach to 1/11000th part of its original volume! Yet it had still seventeen days' journey to make before reaching perihelion. The same curious circumstance was even more markedly apparent at its return in 1838. Its bulk, or the actual space occupied by it, appeared to be reduced, as it drew near the hearth of our system, in the enormous proportion of 800,000[Pg 93] to 1. A corresponding expansion accompanied on each occasion its retirement from the sphere of observation. Similar changes of volume, though rarely to the same astounding extent, have been perceived in other comets. They still remain unexplained; but it can scarcely be doubted that they are due to the action of the same energetic internal forces which reveal themselves in so many splendid and surprising cometary phenomena.

Another question of singular interest was raised by Encke's acute inquiries into the movements and disturbances of the first known "comet of short period." He found from the first that its revolutions were subject to some influence besides that of gravity. After every possible allowance had been made for the pulls, now backward, now forward, exerted upon it by the several planets, there was still a surplus of acceleration left unaccounted for. Each return to perihelion took place about two and a half hours sooner than received theories warranted. Here, then, was a "residual phenomenon" of the utmost promise for the disclosure of novel truths. Encke (in accordance with the opinion of Olbers) explained it as due to the presence in space of some such "subtle matter" as was long ago invoked by Euler[247] to be the agent of eventual destruction for the fair scheme of planetary creation. The apparent anomaly of accounting for an accelerative effect by a retarding cause disappears when it is considered that any check to the motion of bodies revolving round a centre of attraction causes them to draw closer to it, thus shortening their periods and quickening their circulation. If space were filled with a resisting medium capable of impeding, even in the most infinitesimal degree, the swift course of the planets, their orbits should necessarily be, not ellipses, but very close elliptical spirals along which they would slowly, but inevitably, descend into the burning lap of the sun. The circumstance that no such tendency can be traced in their revolutions by no means sets the question at rest. For it might well be that an effect totally imperceptible until after the lapse of countless ages, as regards the solid orbs of our system, might be obvious in the movements of bodies like comets of small mass and great bulk; just as a feather or a gauze veil at once yields its motion to the resistance of the air, while a cannon-ball cuts its way through with comparatively slight loss of velocity.

It will thus be seen that issues of the most momentous character hang on the time-keeping of comets; for plainly all must in some degree suffer the same kind of hindrance as Encke's, if the cause of that hindrance be the one suggested. None of its congeners, however, show any trace of similar symptoms. True,[Pg 94] the late Professor Oppolzer announced,[248] in 1880, that a comet, first seen by Pons in 1819, and rediscovered by Winnecke in 1858, having a period of 2,052 days (5·6 years), was accelerated at each revolution precisely in the manner required by Encke's theory. But M. von Haerdtl's subsequent investigation, the materials for which included numerous observations of the body in question at its return to the sun in 1886, decisively negatived the presence of any such effect.[249] Moreover, the researches of Von Asten and Backlund[250] into the movements of Encke's comet revealed a perplexing circumstance. They confirmed Encke's results for the period covered by them, but exhibited the acceleration as having suddenly diminished by nearly one-half in 1868. The reality and permanence of this change were fully established by observations of the ensuing return in March, 1885. Some physical alteration of the retarded body seems indicated; but visual evidence countenances no such assumption. In aspect the comet is no less thin and diffuse than in 1795 or in 1848.

The character of the supposed resistance in inter-planetary space has, it may be remarked, been often misapprehended. What Encke stipulated for was not a medium equally diffused throughout the visible universe, such as the ethereal vehicle of the vibrations of light, but a rare fluid, rapidly increasing in density towards the sun.[251] This cannot be a solar atmosphere, since it is mathematically certain, as Laplace has shown,[252] that no envelope partaking of the sun's axial rotation can extend farther from his surface than nine-tenths of the mean distance of Mercury; while physical evidence assures us that the actual depth of the solar atmosphere bears a very minute proportion to the possible depth theoretically assigned to it. That matter, however, not atmospheric in its nature—that is, neither forming one body with the sun nor altogether aëriform—exists in its neighbourhood, can admit of no reasonable doubt. The great lens-shaped mass of the zodiacal light, stretching out at times far beyond the earth's orbit, may indeed be regarded as an extension of the corona, the streamers of which themselves mark the wide diffusion, all round the solar globe, of granular or gaseous materials. Yet comets have been known to penetrate the sphere occupied by them without perceptible loss of velocity. The hypothesis, then, of a resisting medium receives at present no countenance from the movements of comets, whether of short or of long periods.

Although Encke's comet has made thirty-five complete rounds of its orbit since its first detection in 1786, it shows no certain signs[Pg 95] of decay. Variations in its brightness are, it is true, conspicuous, but they do not proceed continuously.[253]

The history of the next known planet-like comet has proved of even more curious interest than that of the first. It was discovered by an Austrian officer named Wilhelm von Biela at Josephstadt in Bohemia, February 27, 1826, and ten days later by the French astronomer Gambart at Marseilles. Both observers computed its orbit, showed its remarkable similarity to that traversed by comets visible in 1772 and 1805, and connected them together as previous appearances of the body just detected by assigning to its revolutions a period of between six and seven years. The two brief letters conveying these strikingly similar inferences were printed side by side in the same number of the Astronomische Nachrichten (No. 94); but Biela's priority in the discovery of the comet was justly recognised by the bestowal upon it of his name.

The object in question was at no time, subsequently to 1805, visible to the naked eye. Its aspect in Sir John Herschel's great reflector on the 23rd of September, 1832, was described by him as that of a "conspicuous nebula," nearly 3 minutes in diameter. No trace of a tail was discernible. While he was engaged in watching it, a small knot of minute stars was directly traversed by it, "and when on the cluster," he tells us,[254] it "presented the appearance of a nebula resolvable and partly resolved into stars, the stars of the cluster being visible through the comet." Yet the depth of cometary matter through which such faint stellar rays penetrated undimmed, was, near the central parts of the globe, not less than 50,000 miles.

It is curious to find that this seemingly harmless, and we may perhaps add effete body, gave occasion to the first (and not the last) cometary "scare" of an enlightened century. Its orbit, at the descending node, may be said to have intersected that of the earth; since, according as it bulged in or out under the disturbing influence of the planets, the passage of the comet was affected inside or outside the terrestrial track. Now, certain calculations published by Olbers in 1828[255] showed that, on October 29, 1832, a considerable portion of its nebulous surroundings would actually sweep over the spot which, a month later, would be occupied by our planet. It needed no more to set the popular imagination in a ferment. Astronomers, after all, could not, by an alarmed public, be held to be infallible. Their computations, it was averred, which a trifling oversight would suffice to vitiate, exhibited clearly enough the danger, but afforded no guarantee of safety from a collision, with all the terrific consequences[Pg 96] frigidly enumerated by Laplace. Nor did the panic subside until Arago formally demonstrated that the earth and the comet could by no possibility approach within less than fifty millions of miles.[256]

The return of the same body in 1845-46 was marked by an extraordinary circumstance. When first seen, November 28, it wore its usual aspect of a faint round patch of cosmical fog; but on December 19, Mr. Hind noticed that it had become distorted somewhat into the form of a pear; and ten days later, it had divided into two separate objects. This singular duplication was first perceived at New Haven in America, December 29,[257] by Messrs. Herrick and Bradley, and by Lieutenant Maury at Washington, January 13, 1846. The earliest British observer of the phenomenon (noticed by Wichmann the same evening at Königsberg) was Professor Challis. "I see two comets!" he exclaimed, putting his eye to the great equatoreal of the Cambridge Observatory on the night of January 15; then, distrustful of what his senses had told him, he called in his judgment to correct their improbable report by resolving one of the dubious objects into a hazy star.[258] On the 23rd, however, both were again seen by him in unmistakable cometary shape, and until far on in March (Otto Struve caught a final glimpse of the pair on the 16th of April),[259] continued to be watched with equal curiosity and amazement by astronomers in every part of the northern hemisphere. What Seneca reproved Ephorus for supposing to have taken place in 373 b.c.—what Pingré blamed Kepler for conjecturing in 1618—had then actually occurred under the attentive eyes of science in the middle of the nineteenth century!

At a distance from each other of about two-thirds the distance of the moon from the earth, the twin comets meantime moved on tranquilly, so far, at least, as their course through the heaven was concerned. Their extreme lightness, or the small amount of matter contained in each, could not have received a more signal illustration than by the fact that their revolutions round the sun were performed independently; that is to say, they travelled side by side without experiencing any appreciable mutual disturbance, thus plainly showing[Pg 97] that at an interval of only 157,250 miles their attractive power was virtually inoperative. Signs of internal agitation, however, were not wanting. Each fragment threw out a short tail in a direction perpendicular to the line joining their centres, and each developed a bright nucleus, although the original comet had exhibited neither of these signs of cometary vitality. A singular interchange of brilliancy was, besides, observed to take place between the coupled objects, each of which alternately outshone and was outshone by the other, while an arc of light, apparently proceeding from the more lustrous, at times bridged the intervening space. Obviously, the gravitational tie, rendered powerless by exiguity of matter, was here replaced by some other form of mutual action, the nature of which can as yet be dealt with only by conjecture.

Once more, in August, 1852, the double comet returned to the neighbourhood of the sun, but under circumstances not the most advantageous for observation. Indeed, the companion was not detected until September 16, when Father Secchi at Rome perceived it to have increased its distance from the originating body to a million and a quarter of miles, or about eight times the average interval at the former appearance. Both vanished shortly afterwards, and have never since been seen, notwithstanding the eager watch kept for objects of such singular interest, and the accurate knowledge of their track supplied by Santini's investigations. A dangerously near approach to Jupiter in 1841 is believed to have occasioned their disruption, and the disaggregating process thus started was likely to continue. We can scarcely doubt that the fate has overtaken them which Newton assigned as the end of all cometary existence. Diffundi tandem et spargi per cœlos universos.[260]

Biela's is not the only vanished comet. Brorsen's, discovered at Kiel in 1846, and observed at four subsequent returns, failed unaccountably to become visible in 1890.[261] Yet numerous sentinels were on the alert to surprise its approach along a well-ascertained track, traversed in five and a half years. The object presented from the first a somewhat time-worn aspect. It was devoid of tail, or any other kind of appendage; and the rapid loss of the light acquired during perihelion passage was accompanied by inordinate expansion of an already tenuous globular mass. Another lost or mislaid comet is one found by De Vico at Rome, August 22, 1844. It was expected to return early in 1850, but did not, and has never[Pg 98] since been seen; unless its re-appearance as E. Swift's comet of 1894 should be ratified by closer inquiry.[262]

A telescopic comet with a period of 7-1/2 years, discovered November 22, 1843, by M. Faye of the Paris Observatory, formed the subject of a characteristically patient and profound inquiry on the part of Leverrier, designed to test its suggested identity with Lexell's comet of 1770. The result was decisive against the hypothesis of Valz, the divergences between the orbits of the two bodies being found to increase instead of to diminish, as the history of the new-comer was traced backward into the previous century.[263] Faye's comet pursues the most nearly circular path of any similar known object; even at its nearest approach to the sun it remains farther off than Mars when he is most distant from it; and it was proved by the admirable researches of Professor Axel Möller,[264] director of the Swedish observatory of Lund, to exhibit no trace of the action of a resisting medium.

Periodical comets are evidently bodies which have each lived through a chapter of accidents, and a significant hint as to the nature of their adventures can be gathered from the fact that their aphelia are pretty closely grouped about the tracks of the major planets. Halley's, and five other comets are thus related to Neptune; three connect themselves with Uranus, two with Saturn, above a score with Jupiter. Some form of dependence is plainly indicated, and the researches of Tisserand,[265] Callandreau,[266] and Newton[267] of Yale College, leave scarcely a doubt that the "capture-theory" represents the essential truth in the matter. The original parabolic paths of these comets were then changed into ellipses by the backward pull of a planet, whose sphere of attraction they chanced to enter when approaching the sun from outer space. Moreover, since a body thus affected should necessarily return at each revolution to the scene of encounter, the same process of retardation may, in some cases, have been repeated many times, until the more restricted cometary orbits were reduced to their present dimensions. The prevalence, too, among periodical comets, of direct motion, is shown to be inevitable by M. Callandreau's demonstration that those travelling in a retrograde direction would, by planetary action, be thrown outside the probable range of terrestrial observation. The scarcity of hyperbolic comets can be[Pg 99] similarly explained. They would be created whenever the attractive influence of the disturbing planet was exerted in a forward or accelerative sense, but could come only by a rare exception to our notice. The inner planets, including the earth, have also unquestionably played their parts in modifying cometary orbits; and Mr. Plummer suggests, with some show of reason, that the capture of Encke's comet may be a feat due to Mercury.[268]

No great comet appeared between the "star" which presided at the birth of Napoleon and the "vintage" comet of 1811. The latter was first described by Flaugergues at Viviers, March 26, 1811; Wisniewski, at Neu-Tscherkask in Southern Russia, caught a final glimpse of it, August 17, 1812. Two disappearances in the solar rays as the earth moved round in its orbit, and two reappearances after conjunction, were included in this unprecedentedly long period of visibility of 510 days. This relative permanence (so far as the inhabitants of Europe were concerned) was due to the high northern latitude attained near perihelion, combined with a certain leisureliness of movement along a path everywhere external to that of the earth. The magnificent luminous train of this body, on October 15, the day of its nearest terrestrial approach, covered an arc of the heavens 23-1/2 degrees in length, corresponding to a real extension of one hundred millions of miles. Its form was described by Sir William Herschel as that of "an inverted hollow cone," and its colour as yellowish, strongly contrasted with the bluish-green tint of the "head," round which it was flung like a transparent veil. The planetary disc of the head, 127,000 miles across, appeared to be composed of strongly-condensed nebulous matter; but somewhat eccentrically situated within it was a star-like nucleus of a reddish tinge, which Herschel presumed to be solid, and ascertained, with his usual care, to have a diameter of 428 miles. From the total absence of phases, as well as from the vivacity of its radiance, he confidently inferred that its light was not borrowed, but inherent.[269]

This remarkable apparition formed the subject of a memoir by Olbers,[270] the striking yet steadily reasoned out suggestions contained in which there was at that time no means of following up with profit. Only of late has the "electrical theory," of which Zöllner[271] regarded Olbers as the founder, assumed a definite and measurable form, capable of being tested by the touchstone of fact, as knowledge makes its slow inroads on the fundamental mystery of the physical universe.

[Pg 100]

The paraboloidal shape of the bright envelope separated by a dark interval from the head of the great comet of 1811, and constituting, as it were, the root of its tail, seemed to the astronomer of Bremen to reveal the presence of a double repulsion; the expelled vapours accumulating where the two forces, solar and cometary, balanced each other, and being then swept backwards in a huge train. He accordingly distinguished three classes of these bodies:—First, comets which develop no matter subject to solar repulsion. These have no tails, and are probably mere nebulosities, without solid nuclei. Secondly, comets which are acted upon by solar repulsion only, and consequently throw out no emanations towards the sun. Of this kind was a bright comet visible in 1807.[272] Thirdly, comets like that of 1811, giving evidence of action of both kinds. These are distinguished by a dark hoop encompassing the head and dividing it from the luminous envelope, as well as by an obscure caudal axis, resulting from the hollow, cone-like structure of the tail.

Again, the ingenious view subsequently propounded by M. Brédikhine as to the connection between the form of these appendages and the kind of matter composing them, was very clearly anticipated by Olbers. The amount of tail-curvature, he pointed out, depends in each case upon the proportion borne by the velocity of the ascending particles to that of the comet in its orbit; the swifter the outrush, the straighter the resulting tail. But the velocity of the ascending particles varies with the energy of their repulsion by the sun, and this again, it may be presumed, with their quality. Thus multiple tails are developed when the same comet throws off, as it approaches perihelion, specifically distinct substances. The long, straight ray which proceeded from the comet of 1807, for example, was doubtless made up of particles subject to a much more vigorous solar repulsion than those formed into the shorter curved emanation issuing from it nearly in the same direction. In the comet of 1811 he calculated that the particles expelled from the head travelled to the remote extremity of the tail in eleven minutes, indicating by this enormous rapidity of movement (comparable to that of the transmission of light) the action of a force much more powerful than the opposing one of gravity. The not uncommon phenomena of multiple envelopes, on the other hand, he explained as due to the varying amounts of repulsion exercised by the nucleus itself on the different kinds of matter developed from it.

The movements and perturbations of the comet of 1811 were no less profoundly studied by Argelander than its physical constitution by Olbers. The orbit which he assigned to it is of such vast dimensions as to require no less that 3,065 years for[Pg 101] the completion of its circuit; and to carry the body describing it at each revolution to fourteen times the distance from the sun of the frigid Neptune. Thus, when it last visited our neighbourhood, Achilles may have gazed on its imposing train as he lay on the sands all night bewailing the loss of Patroclus; and when it returns, it will perhaps be to shine upon the ruins of empires and civilizations still deep buried among the secrets of the coming time.[273]

On the 26th of June, 1819, while the head of a comet passed across the face of the sun, the earth was in all probability involved in its tail. But of this remarkable double event nothing was known until more than a month later, when the fact of its past occurrence emerged from the calculations of Olbers.[274] Nor had the comet itself been generally visible previous to the first days of July. Several observers, however, on the publication of these results, brought forward accounts of singular spots perceived by them upon the sun at the time of the transit, and an original drawing of one of them, by Pastorff of Buchholtz, has been preserved. This undoubtedly authentic delineation[275] represents a round nebulous object with a bright spot in the centre, of decidedly cometary aspect, and not in the least like an ordinary solar "macula." Mr. Hind,[276] nevertheless, showed its position on the sun to be irreconcilable with that which the comet must have occupied; and Mr. Ranyard's discovery of a similar smaller drawing by the same author, dated May 26, 1828,[277] reduces to evanescence the probability of its connection with that body. Indeed, recent experience renders very doubtful the possibility of such an observation.

The return of Halley's comet in 1835 was looked forward to as an opportunity for testing the truth of floating cometary theories, and did not altogether disappoint expectation. As early as 1817, its movements and disturbances since 1759 were proposed by the Turin Academy of Sciences as the subject of a prize ultimately awarded to Baron Damoiseau. Pontécoulant was adjudged a similar distinction by the Paris Academy in 1829; while Rosenberger's calculations were rewarded with the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.[278]

They were verified by the detection at Rome, August 6, 1835, of[Pg 102] a nearly circular misty object not far from the predicted place of the comet. It was not, however, until the middle of September that it began to throw out a tail, which by the 15th of October had attained a length of about 24 degrees (on the 19th, at Madras, it extended to fully 30),[279] the head showing to the naked eye as a reddish star rather brighter than Aldebaran or Antares.[280] Some curious phenomena accompanied the process of tail-formation. An outrush of luminous matter, resembling in shape a partially opened fan, issued from the nucleus towards the sun, and at a certain point, like smoke driven before a high wind, was vehemently swept backwards in a prolonged train. The appearance of the comet at this time was compared by Bessel,[281] who watched it with minute attention, to that of a blazing rocket. He made the singular observation that this fan of light, which seemed the source of supply for the tail, oscillated like a pendulum to and fro across a line joining the sun and nucleus, in a period of 4-3/5 days; and he was unable to escape from the conclusion[282] that a repulsive force, about twice as powerful as the attractive force of gravity, was concerned in the production of these remarkable effects. Nor did he hesitate to recur to the analogy of magnetic polarity, or to declare, still more emphatically than Olbers, "the emission of the tail to be a purely electrical phenomenon."[283]

The transformations undergone by this body were almost as strange and complete as those which affected the brigands in Dante's Inferno. When first seen, it wore the aspect of a nebula; later it put on the distinctive garb of a comet; it next appeared as a star; finally, it dilated, first in a spherical, then in a paraboloidal form, until May 5, 1836, when it vanished from Herschel's observation at Feldhausen as if by melting into adjacent space from the excessive diffusion of its light. A very uncommon circumstance in its development was that it lost all trace of tail previous to its arrival at perihelion on the 16th of November. Nor did it begin to recover its elongated shape for more than two months afterwards. On the 23rd of January, Boguslawski perceived it as a star of the sixth magnitude, without measurable disc.[284] Only two nights later, Maclear, director of the Cape Observatory, found the head to be 131 seconds across.[285] And so rapidly did the augmentation of size progress, that Sir John Herschel estimated the actual bulk of this[Pg 103] singular object to have increased forty-fold in the ensuing week. "I can hardly doubt," he remarks, "that the comet was fairly evaporated in perihelio by the heat, and resolved into transparent vapour, and is now in process of rapid condensation and re-precipitation on the nucleus."[286] A plausible, but no longer admissible, interpretation of this still unexplained phenomenon. The next return of this body, which will be considerably accelerated by Jupiter's influence, is expected to take place in 1910.[287]

By means of an instrument devised to test the quality of light, Arago obtained decisive evidence that some at least of the radiance proceeding from Halley's comet was derived by reflection from the sun.[288] Indications of the same kind had been afforded[289] by the comet which suddenly appeared above the north-western horizon of Paris, July 3, 1819, after having enveloped (as already stated) our terrestrial abode in its filmy appendages; but the "polariscope" had not then reached the perfection subsequently given to it, and its testimony was accordingly far less reliable than in 1835. Such experiments, however, are in reality more beautiful and ingenious than instructive, since ignited as well as obscure bodies possess the power of throwing back light incident upon them, and will consequently transmit to us from the neighbourhood of the sun rays partly direct, partly reflected, of which a certain proportion will exhibit the peculiarity known as polarisation.

The most brilliant comets of the century were suddenly rivalled if not surpassed by the extraordinary object which blazed out beside the sun, February 28, 1843. It was simultaneously perceived in Mexico and the United States, in Southern Europe, and at sea off the Cape of Good Hope, where the passengers on board the Owen Glendower were amazed by the sight of a "short, dagger-like object," closely following the sun towards the western horizon.[290] At Florence, Amici found its distance from the sun's centre at noon to be only 1° 23′; and spectators at Parma were able, when sheltered from the direct glare of mid-day, to trace the tail to a length of four or five degrees. The full dimensions of this astonishing appurtenance began to be disclosed a few days later. On the 3rd of March it measured 25°, and on the 11th, at Calcutta, Mr. Clerihew observed a second streamer, nearly twice as long as the first, and making an angle with it of 18°, to have been emitted in a single day. This rapidity of projection, Sir John Herschel remarked, "conveys an astounding impression of the intensity of the forces at work." "It [Pg 104]is clear," he continued, "that if we have to deal here with matter, such as we conceive it—viz., possessing inertia—at all, it must be under the dominion of forces incomparably more energetic than gravitation, and quite of a different nature."[291]

On the 17th of March a silvery ray, some 40° long and slightly curved at its extremity, shone out above the sunset clouds in this country. No previous intimation had been received of the possibility of such an apparition, and even astronomers—no lightning messages across the seas being as yet possible—were perplexed. The nature of the phenomenon, indeed, soon became evident, but the wonder of it did not diminish with the study of its attendant circumstances. Never before, within astronomical memory, had our system been traversed by a body pursuing such an adventurous career. The closest analogy was offered by the great comet of 1680 (Newton's), which rushed past the sun at a distance of only 144,000 miles; but even this—on the cosmical scale—scarcely perceptible interval was reduced nearly one-half in the case we are now concerned with. The centre of the comet of 1843 approached the formidable luminary within 78,000 miles, leaving, it is estimated, a clear space of not more than 32,000 between the surfaces of the bodies brought into such perilous proximity. The escape of the wanderer was, however, secured by the extraordinary rapidity of its flight. It swept past perihelion at a rate—366 miles a second—which, if continued, would have carried it right round the sun in two hours; and in only eleven minutes more than that short period it actually described half the curvature of its orbit—an arc of 180°—although in travelling over the remaining half many hundreds of sluggish years will doubtless be consumed.

The behaviour of this comet may be regarded as an experimentum crucis as to the nature of tails. For clearly no fixed appendage many millions of miles in length could be whirled like a brandished sabre from one side of the sun to the other in 131 minutes. Cometary trains are then, as Olbers rightly conceived them to be, emanations, not appendages—inconceivably rapid outflows of highly rarefied matter, the greater part, if not all, of which becomes permanently detached from the nucleus.

That of the comet of 1843 reached, about the time that it became visible in this country, the extravagant length of 200 millions of miles.[292] It was narrow, and bounded by nearly parallel and nearly rectilinear lines, resembling—to borrow a comparison of Aristotle's—a "road" through the constellations; and after the 3rd of March showed no trace of hollowness, the axis being, in fact, rather brighter[Pg 105] than the edges. Distinctly perceptible in it were those singular aurora-like coruscations which gave to the "tresses" of Charles V.'s comet the appearance—as Cardan described it—of "a torch agitated by the wind," and have not unfrequently been observed to characterise other similar objects. A consideration first adverted to by Olbers proves these to originate in our own atmosphere. For owing to the great difference in the distances from the earth of the origin and extremity of such vast effluxes, the light proceeding from their various parts is transmitted to our eyes in notably different intervals of time. Consequently a luminous undulation, even though propagated instantaneously from end to end of a comet's tail, would appear to us to occupy many minutes in its progress. But the coruscations in question pass as swiftly as a falling star. They are, then, of terrestrial production.

Periods of the utmost variety were by different computators assigned to the body, which arrived at perihelion, February 27, 1843, at 9.47 p.m. Professor Hubbard of Washington found that it required 533 years to complete a revolution; MM. Laugier and Mauvais of Paris considered the true term to be 35;[293] Clausen looked for its return at the end of between six and seven. A recent discussion[294] by Professor Kreutz of all the available data gives a probable period of 512 years for this body, and precludes its hypothetical identity with the comet of 1668, known as the "Spina" of Cassini.

It may now be asked, what were the conclusions regarding the nature of comets drawn by astronomers from the considerable amount of novel experience accumulated during the first half of this century? The first and best assured was that the matter composing them is in a state of extreme tenuity. Numerous and trustworthy observations showed that the feeblest rays of light might traverse some hundreds of thousands of miles of their substance, even where it was apparently most condensed, without being perceptibly weakened. Nay, instances were recorded in which stars were said to have gained in brightness from the process![295] On the 24th of June, 1825, Olbers[296] saw the comet then visible all but obliterated by the central passage of a star too small to be distinguished with the naked eye, its own light remaining wholly unchanged. A similar effect was noted December 1, 1811, when the great comet of that year approached so close to Altair, the lucida of the Eagle, that the star seemed to be transformed into the nucleus of the comet.[297] Even the[Pg 106] central blaze of Halley's comet in 1835 was powerless to impede the passage of stellar rays. Struve[298] observed at Dorpat, on September 17, an all but central occultation; Glaisher[299] one (so far as he could ascertain) absolutely so eight days later at Cambridge. In neither case was there any appreciable diminution of the star's light. Again, on the 11th of October, 1847, Mr. Dawes,[300] an exceptionally keen observer, distinctly saw a star of the tenth magnitude through the exact centre of a comet discovered on the first of that month by Maria Mitchell of Nantucket.

Examples, on the other hand, are not wanting of the diminution of stellar light under similar circumstances;[301] and we meet two alleged instances of the vanishing of a star behind a comet. Wartmann of Geneva observed the first, November 28, 1828;[302] but his instrument was defective, and the eclipsing body, Encke's comet, has shown itself otherwise perfectly translucent. The second case of occultation occurred September 13, 1890, when an eleventh magnitude star was stated to have completely disappeared during the transit over it of Denning's comet.[303]

From the failure to detect any effects of refraction in the light of stars occulted by comets, it was inferred (though, as we know now, erroneously) that their composition is rather that of dust than that of vapour; that they consist not of any continuous substance, but of discrete solid particles, very finely divided and widely scattered. In conformity with this view was the known smallness of their masses. Laplace had shown that if the amount of matter forming Lexell's comet had been as much as 1/5000 of that contained in our globe, the effect of its attraction, on the occasion of its approach within 1,438,000 miles of the earth, July 1, 1770, must have been apparent in the lengthening of the year. And that some comets, at any rate, possess masses immeasurably below this maximum value was clearly proved by the undisturbed parallel march of the two fragments of Biela's in 1846.

But the discovery in this branch most distinctive of the period under review is that of "short period" comets, of which four[304] were known in 1850. These, by the character of their movements, serve as a link between the planetary and cometary worlds, and by the[Pg 107] nature of their construction, seem to mark a stage in cometary decay. For that comets are rather transitory agglomerations, than permanent products of cosmical manufacture, appeared to be demonstrated by the division and disappearance of one amongst their number, as well as by the singular and rapid changes in appearance undergone by many, and the seemingly irrevocable diffusion of their substance visible in nearly all. They might then be defined, according to the ideas respecting them prevalent fifty years ago, as bodies unconnected by origin with the solar system, but encountered, and to some extent appropriated, by it in its progress through space, owing their visibility in great part, if not altogether, to light reflected from the sun, and their singular and striking forms to the action of repulsive forces emanating from him, the penalty of their evanescent splendour being paid in gradual waste and final dissipation and extinction.[Pg 108]

FOOTNOTES:

[241] Allgemeine Geographische Ephemeriden, vol. iv., p. 287.

[242] Astr. Jahrbuch, 1823, p. 217. The period (1,208 days) of this body is considerably shorter than that of any other known comet.

[243] "Sicut bombyces filo fundendo, sic cometas cauda exspiranda consumi et denique mori."—De Cometis, Op., vol. vii., p. 110.

[244] Considerable uncertainty, however, still prevails on the point. The inverse relation assumed by Lagrange to exist between distance from the sun and density brought out the Mercurian mass 1/2025810 that of the sun (Laplace, Exposition du Syst. du Monde, t. ii., p. 50, ed. 1824). Von Asten deduced from the movements of Encke's comet, 1818-48, a value of 1/7636440; while Backlund from its seven returns, 1871-1891, derived 1/9647000 (Comptes Rendus, Oct. 1, 1894).

[245] Arago, Annuaire (1832), p. 218.

[246] Hind, The Comets, p. 20.

[247] Phil. Trans., vol. xlvi., p. 204.

[248] Astr. Nach., No. 2,134.

[249] Comptes Rendus, t. cvii., p. 588.

[250] Mém. de St. Pétersbourg, t. xxxii., No. 3, 1884; Astr. Nach., No. 2,727.

[251] Month. Not., vol. xix., p. 72.

[252] Mécanique Céleste, t. ii., p. 197.

[253] See Berberich, Astr. Nach., Nos. 2,836-7, 3,125; Deichmüller, Ibid., No. 3,123.

[254] Month. Not., vol. ii., p. 117.

[255] Astr. Nach., No. 128.

[256] Annuaire, 1832, p. 186.

[257] Am. Journ. of Science, vol. i. (2nd series), p. 293. Prof. Hubbard's calculations indicated a probability that the definitive separation of the two nuclei occurred as early as September 30, 1884. Astronomical Journal (Gould's), vol. iv., p. 5. See also, on the subject of this comet, W. T. Lynn, Intellectual Observer, vol. xi., p. 208; E. Ledger, Observatory, August, 1883, p. 244; and H. A. Newton, Am. Journ. of Science, vol. xxxi., p. 81, February, 1886.

[258] Month. Not., vol. vii., p. 73.

[259] Bulletin Ac. Imp. de St. Pétersbourg, t. vi., col. 77. The latest observation of the parent nucleus was that of Argelander, April 27, at Bonn.

[260] D'Arrest, Astr. Nach., No. 1,624.

[261] Der Brorsen'sche Comet. Von Dr. E. Lamp, Kiel, 1892; Plummer, Knowledge, vol. xix., p. 41.

[262] Schulhof, Astr. Nach., No. 3,267; Observatory, vol. xviii., p. 64; F. H. Seares, Astr. Nach., Nos. 3,606-7; Plummer, Knowledge, vol. xix., p. 156.

[263] Comptes Rendus, t. xxv., p. 570.

[264] Month. Not., vol. xii., p. 248.

[265] Bull. Astr., t. vi., pp. 241, 289.

[266] Étude sur la Théorie des Comètes périodiques. Annales de l'Observatoíre, t. xx., Paris, 1891.

[267] Amer. Journ. of Science, vol. xlii., pp. 183, 482, 1891.

[268] Observatory, vol. xiv., p. 194.

[269] Phil. Trans., vol. cii., pp. 118-124.

[270] Ueber den Schweif des grossen Cometen von 1811, Monat. Corr., vol. xxv., pp. 3-22. Reprinted by Zöllner. Ueber die Natur der Cometen, pp. 3-15.

[271] Natur der Cometen, p. 148.

[272] The subject of a classical memoir by Bessel, published in 1810.

[273] A fresh investigation of its orbit has been published by N. Herz of Vienna. See Bull. Astr., t. ix., p. 427.

[274] Astr. Jahrbuch (Bode's), 1823, p. 134.

[275] Reproduced in Webb's Celestial Objects, 4th ed.

[276] Month. Not., vol. xxxvi., p. 309.

[277] Celestial Objects, p. 40, note.

[278] See Airy's Address, Mem. R. A. S., vol. x., p. 376. Rosenberger calculated no more, though he lived until 1890. W. T. Lynn, Observatory, vol. xiii., p. 125.

[279] Hind, The Comets, p. 47.

[280] Arago, Annuaire, 1836, p. 228.

[281] Astr. Nach., No. 300.

[282] It deserves to be recorded that Robert Hooke drew a very similar inference from his observations of the comets of 1680 and 1682. Month. Not., vol. xiv., pp. 77-83.

[283] Briefwechsel zwischen Olbers und Bessel, Bd. ii., p. 390.

[284] Herschel, Results, p. 405.

[285] Mem. R. A. S., vol. x., p. 92,

[286] Results, p. 401.

[287] Pontécoulant, Comptes Rendus, t. lviii., p. 825.

[288] Annuaire, 1836, p. 233.

[289] Cosmos, vol. i., p. 90, note (Otté's trans.).

[290] Herschel, Outlines of Astronomy, p. 399, 9th ed.

[291] Outlines, p. 398.

[292] Boguslawski calculated that it extended on the 21st of March to 581 millions.—Report. Brit. Ass., 1845, p. 89.

[293] Comptes Rendus, t. xvi., p. 919.

[294] Observatory, vol. xxiv., p. 167; Astr. Nach., No. 3,320.

[295] Piazzi noticed a considerable increase of lustre in a very faint star of the twelfth magnitude viewed through a comet. Mädler, Reden, etc., p. 248, note.

[296] Astr. Jahrbuch, 1828, p. 151.

[297] Mädler, Gesch. d. Astr., Bd. ii., p. 412.

[298] Recueil de l'Ac. Imp. de St. Pétersbourg, 1835, p. 143.

[299] Guillemin's World of Comets, trans, by J. Glaisher, p. 294, note.

[300] Month. Not., vol. viii., p. 9.

[301] A real, though only partial stoppage of light seems indicated by Herschel's observations on the comet of 1807. Stars seen through the tail, October 18, lost much of their lustre. One near the head was only faintly visible by glimpses. Phil. Trans., vol. xcvii., p. 153.

[302] Arago, Annuaire, 1832, p. 205.

[303] Ibid., 1891, p. 290.

[304] Viz., Encke's, Biela's, Faye's, and Brorsen's.

article by Agnes Mary Clerke

from The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century