Abstract
OLBERS' COMET OF 1815.—The Royal Society of Sciences of Haarlem have offered a prize for a new determination of the elements of this comet, founded upon the whole series of observations which remain in a form admitting of more accurate reduction than they have yet received, by the use of improved positions of the comparison stars and a calculation of the effect of perturbations, while the comet was visible, with the more precise values of the planetary masses which we now possess. Bessel, in his final memoir upon this comet, not only investigated the elements of the orbit from the ensemble of the observations in the form in which they were known to him in 1815, but essayed to determine the effect of planetary attraction upon the epoch of next return to perihelion, which he fixed to February 9, 1887, but he found that the period of revolution resulting from the observations in 1815, was liable to a probable error of ± 101 days. Unless the semi-axis major admits of determination within narrower limits, a recomputation of the perturbations would lose much of its value and interest, and accordingly the Haarlem Society, in stating the terms of the prize, limit the investigation now demanded to a definitive calculation of the orbit of the comet in 1815, at least we so understand the notification in Astronomische Nachrichten, No. 2,264. Allusion is made to NATURE, vol. xix. pp. 268, 366, where we gave references to publications in which the observations of this comet that admit of a new reduction are to be found. The Society at the same time offer a prize for a critical examination of Serpieri's theory of the zodiacal light, “especially if it is to be sought within or without the earth's atmosphere,” and it does not clearly appear from the article in the Astronomische Nachrichten, whether one prize is intended to apply to the two subjects; we can hardly suppose that this is the case, as it seems unlikely that any one person would engage upon problems of so widely different a character.
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Our Astronomical Column . Nature 20, 226 (1879). https://doi.org/10.1038/020226a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/020226a0