Page:The story of the comets.djvu/203

bent round towards the tail, which it assisted in providing with a bright exterior edge."

The comet was nearest to the Earth on July 21, when its distance was less than it had been on July 13 by 9,000,000 miles. During this week the comet's tail remained visible, stretching towards the N. for some hours after the nucleus had descended below the horizon. It would have been an exceedingly striking object all this week if it could have been seen as a whole, but it had got too close to the Sun. The tail reached a length of 43° on July 19, but on the evening when Brodie's sketch was made it was no more than 20°. Coggia's Comet undoubtedly revolves in an elliptic orbit, but there is great discordance in the values given of the period. Seyboth's period is 5711 years; but Geelmuyden put it as high as 10,445 years.

The Comet of 1880 (i.), generally called the "Great Southern Comet of 1880", was noticed by several persons in Australia, South America, and South Africa on Feb. 1, but its cometary nature seems not to have been recognised till the following night. Gould at Cordoba described the tail as 40° long and from 11/2° to 21/2° broad, but at no time was the nucleus very bright. The elements closely resemble those of the great Comet of 1843, also celebrated, as we have seen, for the length of its tail, but the identity of the 2 bodies has not yet been satisfactorily established.^[1] This comet was unfavourably placed for observation, and was only seen for 2 or 3 weeks.

The Comet of 1882 (iii.) was in some respects one of the most remarkable seen by the present generation of astronomers. It was conspicuously visible to the naked eye for some weeks in September, and altogether remained in sight for the long period of 9 months. The special peculiarities which seem to differentiate this comet from all others which have been exhaustively scrutinised, either before or since, were that the head underwent changes in the nature of disruptions; that the tail may have been tubular; that the extremity of the tail was not only bi-fid (or split), but that it was entirely

1. For detailed observations see Month. Not. R.A.S., vol. xl, pp. 295, 377, 623, March, April, 1880; ibid., vol. xli, p. 85, Dec. 1880.