Abstract
THE comet which, so far as we are yet informed, was first astronomically observed in the southern hemisphere on May 29, is now well under observation in these latitudes, and as its position will become more and more favourable, it will be a mere question as to how long our telescopes will show it, what data may be obtained for an accurate determination of its orbit. The elements appear to have some resemblance to those of the great comet of 1807, to which reference was made in Dr. Gould's early telegram from the observatory at Cordoba, but the identity of the comets appears highly improbable after Bessel's classical memoir containing a rigorous investigation of the orbit of the comet of 1807, which he followed until the perturbations of the known planets had ceased to be sensible. We may briefly recall the circumstances attending the appearance of that body and one or two main results of Bessel's investigation. According to Piazzi it was first detected by an Augustine monk at Castro Giovanni in Sicily on September 9, but the first regular observation was made on the 22nd of the same month by Thulis at Marseilles. From this time the comet's positions were determined at every opportunity by Bessel, Olbers, Oriani, and others until the end of February, 1808, and on the 18th of the following month Wisniewsky, favoured by a very acute vision and the clear skies of St. Petersburg, observed the comet again, and succeeded in fixing its position until the 27th. In consequence of a notification from Olbers, that with powerful telescopes there might be a possibility of observing the comet again as the earth overtook it to some extent in October and November of the same year, Bessel, then working with Schroeter at Lilienthal, closely examined its track with reflectors of 15 and 20 feet focal length, and on November 9 did succeed in finding an extremely faint nebulosity near the computed place of the comet, which he could not find subsequently, but as the position differed 12' from that assigned by an orbit which he considered very exact, he came to the conclusion that the object he observed was not the comet of 1807, but another one which happened to be in the vicinity, and which was not seen elsewhere. The discussion of the six months' observations of the comet appears in the masterly treatise to which we have referred, viz., “Untersuchungen über die scheinbare und wahre Bahn des im Jahre 1807 erschienen grossen Kometen,” published at Königsberg in 1810. The method of determining the perturbations of a comet due to planetary attraction, which is detailed in this memoir, was long practised by the German astronomers in similar cases.
Article PDF
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
NEWALL, R., CHRISTIE, W., PERRY, S. et al. The Comet . Nature 24, 197–201 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/024197a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/024197a0