Page:The story of the comets.djvu/23

THE

STORY OF THE COMETS.

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL REMARKS.

Popular appreciation of Comets and Eclipses and shooting stars.—Comets always objects of popular interest and sometimes of alarm.—Quotation from a writer of the 17th century.—Physical appearance of an ordinary Comet.—Comets without Tails more numerous than Comets with Tails.—General description of a Comet.—The Nucleus.—The Coma.—The Tail.—Small Comets usually circular in form or nearly so.—Path of a Comet.—Great diversity in the size and brilliancy of Comets.—Comets usually diminish in brilliancy at each return.—Halley's Comet, a case in point.—But this opinion has been questioned.—Holetschek's Inquiries.—Actual Dimensions of Comets.—The Colour of Comets.

Quite irrespective of the remarkable growth of a taste for Astronomy which has marked the last quarter of a century, alike in Great Britain, Greater Britain, and North America, to say nothing of the Continent of Europe, there can be no doubt that comets have, and always have had, a great fasci- nation for that student of science newly named "the man in the street". And next in order of interest certainly come Eclipses, Solar and Lunar, and Fire-balls and "Shooting Stars"; but these do not concern us now. It is not difficult to see why all these phenomena should be attractive to the popular mind: they are all sights which can be seen, and in a measure be studied, without professional teaching, and without much (or any) instrumental assistance.

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1. From the Greek κομήτης, the "long-haired one". A woman's head, with long dishevelled tresses streaming behind her, is often a not inapt representation of a comet with a head and tail.