Abstract
THE BIELA COMET METEORS.—Assuming, as some astronomers will probably be inclined to do, that Biela's comet has now lost the cometary form in which it presented itself to us from 1772 to 1852, and that its constitutuent particles, or whatever we may term them, are drawn out into a stream or band, beyond the circumstance of a great aggregation having been encountered by the earth on the evening of November 27, 1872, we are ignorant of the position of any other centre or centres of condensation that may exist, and even of the real extent of that which has been observed, along the comet's track; and hence it is desirable that a watch for the Biela meteors should be maintained during the whole of the last week in the present month. We are not assuming as a consequence of the disruption of Biela's comet before it was generally observed in 1846, that such is the actual condition of its constituent parts; Mr. Pogson's observations of a cometary body at Madras in December, 1872, require that such an assumption should be taken at present cum grano, but under any circumstances observations about the time when the earth approaches nearest to the orbit of the comet this year, will possess great interest, and we hope there may be an effective organisation of observers. In 1852, when the comet was last observed, its period of revolution, in the instantaneous ellipse at perihelion, was 2,4171/2 days; the effect of planetary perturbation thence tended to increase the period, so that in January, 1866, the latest time to which the calculations have been carried, the revolution extended to 2,445 days, according to Michez and Clausen. If this were about the period of the meteoric mass which the earth encountered on November 27, 1872, it is very doubtful if we shall be in proximity to it again during the present century; nevertheless, as above remarked, we do not know its extent along the orbit, and other aggregations may exist. A body moving in the orbit of Biela, and approaching the earth at this date, would be at a distance of about 1.4 from the planet Jupiter in September, 1878, and there might be very sensible effect upon the period of revolution.
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Our Astronomical Column . Nature 21, 71–72 (1879). https://doi.org/10.1038/021071a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/021071a0