Abstract
ORBITS AND ORIGIN OF COMETS.—The investigations of Schiaparelli led to the conclusion that comets moving in parabolic orbits must have originally had a very small velocity with respect to the sun, and that, apart from planetary perturbations, the probability of elliptic orbits is very small. The latter fact is demonstrated in a somewhat different way by M. V. Wellmann(Bulletin Astronomique, vol. xii. p. 515), the absolute velocities of the sun and comets being introduced. This method leads to the conclusion that the formation of hyperbolas is much more probable than that of ellipses, and that ellipses of large dimensions are much less probable than smaller ones; further, the supposed parabolic orbits which have been calculated are probably nearly all hyberbolas.
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Our Astronomical Column. Nature 53, 180 (1895). https://doi.org/10.1038/053180a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/053180a0