Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1874 — Concerning Comets. [ARTICLE]

Concerning Comets.

Though the structure ami uses of comets are but little known, there are few objects in astronomical science which appeakmore powerfully to the imagination. These wanderers of the skies, recurring at vast intervals of time to the visible portions of their erratic orbits, have in all ages excited the wonder and admiration of the ignorant, the fears of the sujuerstitfoms,-and thespeculations of the scientific mind. Many essays and treatises have been written upon comobs, some of them with tails to ’em so long and so nebulous as,to puzzle the inquiring mind fully as much as their great prototypes which trail across the sky.

The name of the comet comes from the hairy appearance of its tail, being derived from the Greek home—lcome meaning hair. This appendage varies greatly in length in different comets, and the apparent length of the tail of the same comet differs still more widely to the eye, according to its distance and the state of the atmosphere.— The comet which at present excites the curiosity of the public, on its first appearance to the naked eye had a tail of about five degrees in length. Tins is gradually increasing as the nucleus, or body of the confot, moves toward the sonth. — Already according to the calculations of some astronomers, this comet’s tail extends over the modest length of three millions of miles. It will be visible in its greatest length about the 16th of July, when its head will have passed out of sight beyond the northwestern horizon. Tho tail will broaden as well as lengthen during the next few days, but its thin and almost vaporous structure will render it very little conspicuous to the eye, resembling a thin white cloud, or the milky way m its least brilliant aspect.

Comets have been fruitful subjects for writers, while the philosophers have speculated about them and discussed the mystery of their substance, their orbits, and their function in thej solar system, not forgetting the structure of their tails. The poe.ts have been indebted to them for startling imagery and comical comparisons. The theologians, On their part, have made great use of.comets to

strike terror into the minds of the vulgar. But only one of these wandering visitants was ever met or attempted to be counteracted by a Papal bull. The great comet of 1450 was visible during the month of June, and is described as of an unheard-of magnitude. The tail ot this comet stretched over sixty degrees of the heavens, or from the horizon to the zenith. It was accompanied by inundations and earthquakes, and spread terror throughout Europe. Public superstition connected it with the apprehended triumph of the Turks, who were then engaged in overrunning the Christian nations of Europe. Pope Calixtus II issued a bull, in which he anathematized the Turks and the comet together. But the Turks took Constantinople, notwithstanding the bull, and the comet calmly proceeded in its orbit, quite deaf to the thunders of the Vatic i an.

The superstition of mankind has attributed all kinds of elemental convulsions and calamities to cometary influence. To the effects of comets arc charged hot weather and cold, earthquakes, floods and droughts, cyclones and whirlwinds, volcanic eruptions, stortns of rain,, snow and hail, clouds of locusts, epidemic fevers, dysentery, influenza, famine and plagues. As there is no season in which some one of these visitations is not present on some portion of the earth’s surface so the coincidence of a comet’s appearance at the same time furnishes to ignorairce and credulity an unfailing cause for each dreaded phenomenon. Indeed, a learned Russian has written an extensive work to prove that there never was a disaster without a comet, nor a comet without a disaster. Happy are they who, living in an age of newspapers, find the errors and superstitions which are generated only by ignorance dissipated by the widely diffused intelligence which reaches every man’s door.— Cincinnati Commercial.