Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 January 1917 — Great Comet to Shine in Sky Next Spring [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Great Comet to Shine in Sky Next Spring

It should be an interesting spectacle on warm, clear evenings when the stars are brilliant : t Don tbe one of those folks .who take fright and become, panicky for there s no danger*-- "*

The upper picture on the left is from a photograph of Halley s comet taken on its appearance in 1910. To the right is a diagram showing how this comet passed the earth in the spring of that year and almost grazed the sun. The small picture on the left shows Brooks’ comet of 1902.

w -UNLESS something unexB I pected occurs, the world Kg I will witness next spring a great heavenly phenom(tfsl■ kII enon—a mig ht y comet jsyUfey blazing forth night after Al/ night with its tail sweepW ing an imme ns e arc through the heavens, a . superstitious and of in* » tense interest to all. We T may see again, as we did whenHaHey’s comet returned-+ft-49W;-Chinese mobs trying to frighten away the uncanny visitor with flaming torches and savage races falling mt their knees in gibbering prayer to the supposed deity. We may even have absurd scares among usually well-balanced people, who believe the tail of the comet will sweep the surface of our Mother Earth with devastating effect. The tenuous nature of all .comets renders them a source of minor danger, as astronomers agree, and We have little to fear from the vast mass of. nebulous material. even though enveloped in it. - “Comet B, 1916” is the name of the stranger. It is so Called because .it was the second comet discovered -this_ .. year, Professor Wolf of Koenigstuhl detected the rushing body's faint picture on a photographic plate last April and proceeded to telegraph the news to observatories all over the world with great joy. The statement that the new comet will be a monster rests principally on the fact that it was discovered when fully 400.000.000 miles from the earth, wifKhft The urijttntf7tte;Xßni t planet Jupiter. ■ All comets increase greatly in size and brilliancy as they approach the sun.,—lf such proves to be the case this time, -“Comet B. 1916” should make a great impression. It is useless to go out and look for the comet tonight, as It Is now on the other side - ’of the sun, whose greater luminance conceals it. Earth, sun and contet have just passed conjunction, as

’ the state is called when the three bodies are in line. From now on until May, however, conditions will become increasingly favorable for observation. In a few months the comet should be visible to the naked eye in parts of the earth suitably situated. At present the comet is approaching the earth at a rate of more than a million miles a day—but not in a direct line. In the month of December its distance from the earth decreased by nearly 50,000,000 miles, astronomers calculate. It. is now situated in the sky just Tiartn -Of tfiß consieiiittum Libnr~ifntr about 15 degrees northwest of the upper end of the Scorpion. These constellations are near the sun, appearing tn the - early morning hours just preceding sunrise. On January 1 the comet was still more than 300.00p.(XX) miles away. Its perihelion passive, or. nearest approach to the sun, is due next Tune. The path of the comet has not yet been accurately plotted. but dozens of astronomers are working On it With complex tables and extensive mathematical calculations.—-- - ... ;•. - .■ ■ While comets which make a name for themselves are few, the telescope records a large number. Some of them are old friends paying us another visit. These are called periodic comets. They arrive more or; less on schedule time. Their periods of journey about the sun are in some eases hundreds or thousands of years in length. Donatj’s great comet of .1858 takes 2,(XX) years to return to the same spot after its jburhey over a- grear rlongnted etttpso.' Astronomers hav6 not decided whether fill comets return to the sum or not. Some of them appear to have parabolic orbits and fly off info space, never to see the solar system again. But their supposed parabolic orbits may>simply be elliptical orbits of such great size that the few observations whi<h can be made of them do not disclose their elliptical character. The arcs of tire ellipse and the parabola A X

are nearly the same for short” distances. = - - But there are great numbers of comets, known to be permanent members of the solar system. They accompany the sun and its planets in its onward journey through space. While the orbits of the planets are nearly circular, all comets fly alone in greatly drawn out ellipses. Some planets are satellites of the larger planets and fly about the sun. If a comet happens to coate close to a major planet on its journey toward the sun, it may be “captured” and from then on have its orbit permanently changed to include the planet. Jupiter is known to have“qulLe a large family of captured comets. The comet with the shortest known period is Encke’s. This comet never gets farther from the sun than inside the orbit of Jupiter. Halley’s comet, which created the sensation of 1010. has th v longest periodof all the comets classed as periodic. All the gre>it conspicuous comets are of the non-periodic class —that is, they are mot certainly known to return to the sun regularly. •■— The comets are the largest in size and the smallest in mass, per unit of size, of all known heavenly bodies. Almost every comet consists of a bright nucleus, a coma, or “hair” surrounding the nucleus, and a long tail. The tail always points away from the sun. The comet comes up to the sun, goes around it with the tail making a great sweep and finally “backs” away, facing the sun with its tail behind it. The nucleus, although it appears sometimes, as bright as a first-magni-tude star, its believed to be no more than a swarm of meteoric particles. These are evidently bound, together by a loose bond of gravitation. The coma, or hairy gaseous envelope of the nucleus, is Often of great size, as'liea venty d t men slon s go. The head of Donati’s comet was ‘>5p(KX) miles in diameter. while the head of the comet of 1811 measured' more than ~TF inttiion miles through at its greatest magnitude. As the comet approaches close to the sun, the head seems to diminish fit size. The taildevelops as thecomet approaches the sun. and the head contracts. The great comet of 1843 had a tail over 200,000.000 -miles long.