lady member of a well-known German astronomical family, Fräulein Margaretha Kirch.[1]
De Chéseaux has left the following description (translated from the French) of this comet:—
"It appears certain from all the observations up to March 1, that if this comet had appeared under more favourable circumstances, e. g. in the middle of a night instead of so near the setting Sun, and also clear of moonlight, it would have been a more striking comet than had ever been known, alike from the size of its head, and from the length of its tail, which up to this time had been simply double; but something much more surprising was in store for us. The sky was quite overcast from the 1st to the 7th of March, but on this last-named day the clouds became broken and gave us some hope of seeing the comet's tail. I prepared myself for seeing over again just about what I had seen during the closing days of February. At 4 o'clock on the morning of March 8, I went downstairs with a friend into the garden with the East facing us. This friend walking in front of me startled me by saying that instead of 2 tails there were 5. I hardly believed him, but after having passed from behind several buildings which had partly concealed the Eastern horizon from me, I did indeed see 5 tails in the form of whitish rays lying one above the other obliquely above the horizon up to a height of 22°, and of about the same breadth in all. These rays were each about 4° in width, but they became narrower towards their lower extremities. Their edges were sufficiently distinct and rectilinear. Each ray was made up of 3 bands; the middle one was darker, and double the width of the bands forming the edges. These last named resembled precisely the brightest portions of the Milky Way between Antinoüs and Sagittarius, and between Ophiuchus and Scorpio. The interval between the chief rays was dark like the rest of the sky; however, at the bottom there was some luminosity resembling that at the extremity of these rays, as if we were looking at the tips of other rays of shorter length.[2] Besides these 5 tails edged by white bands there was a sixth in which one noticed no bands, perhaps because it was low down. This sixth tail joined to the 10 brighter bands of the others presented the appearance of there being 11 rays in all[3]."
De Chéseaux goes on to make some comments which seem rather intended as a reply to certain persons who had criticised unfavourably the idea that the object which they had been looking at was really a comet. After referring
- ↑ All this story is fully set out by J. W. L. Dreyer in the Copernicus Magazine, vol. iii, p. 104, 1884, accompanied by diagrams.
- ↑ This surmise was founded on fact, for the picture given by the writer quoted above in Copernicus shows clearly that there were several minor tails besides De Chéseaux's 5.
- ↑ These details do not quite harmonise, it will be noticed, with the engraving, but they appear to belong to the date of March 7-8, whilst the engraving appears intended to apply to 2 nights combined.
