Astronomy: The Science of the Heavenly Bodies Part 19

When a suspect is found, the first thing to do is to observe its position accurately with relation to the surrounding stars. Then, if on the next occasion when it is seen the object has moved, the chances are that it is a comet; and a few days' observation will provide material from which the path of the comet in s.p.a.ce can be calculated. By comparing this with the complete lists of comets, now about 700 in number, it is possible to tell whether the comet is a new one, or an old one returning. The total number of comets in the heavens must be very great, and thousands are doubtless pa.s.sing continually undetected, because their light is wholly overpowered by that of the sun. Of those that are known, perhaps one in twelve develops into a naked-eye comet, and in some years six or seven will be discovered. With sufficiently powerful telescopes, there are as a rule not many weeks in the year when no comet is visible. Brilliant naked-eye comets are, however, infrequent.

Comets, except Halley's, generally bear the name of their discoverer, as Donati (1858), and Pons-Brooks (1893). Pons was a very active discoverer of comets in France early in the nineteenth century: he was a doorkeeper at the observatory of Ma.r.s.eilles, and his name is now more famous in astronomy than that of Thulis, then the director of the Observatory, who taught and encouraged him. Messier was another very successful discoverer of comets in France, and in America we have had many: Swift, Brooks, and Barnard the most successful.

How bright a comet will be and how long it will be visible depends upon many conditions. So the comets vary much in these respects. The first comet of 1811 was under observation for nearly a year and a half, the longest on record till Halley's in 1910. In case a comet eludes discovery and observation until it has pa.s.sed its perihelion, or nearest point to the sun, its period of visibility may be reduced to a few weeks only. The brightest comets on record were visible in 1843 and 1882: so brilliant were they that even the effulgence of full daylight did not overpower them. In particular the comet of 1843 was not only excessively bright, but at its nearest approach to the earth its tail swept all the way across the sky from one horizon to the other. It must have looked very much like the straight beam of an enormous searchlight, though very much brighter.

The tails of comets are to the naked eye the most compelling thing about them, and to the ancient peoples they were naturally most terrifying.

Their tails are not only curved, but sometimes curved with varying degrees of curvature, and this circ.u.mstance adds to their weirdness of appearance. If we examine the tail of a comet with a telescope, it vanishes as if there were nothing to it: as indeed one may almost say there is not. Ordinarily, only the head of the comet is of interest in the telescope. When first seen there is usually nothing but the head visible, and that is made up of portions which develop more or less rapidly, presenting a succession of phenomena quite different in different comets.

When first discovered a comet is usually at a great distance from the sun, about the distance of Jupiter; and we see it, not as we do the planets, by sunlight reflected from them, but by the comet's own light.

This is at that time very faint, and nearly all comets at such a distance look alike: small roundish hazy patches of faint, cloudlike light, with very often a concentration toward the center called the nucleus, on the average about 4,000 miles in diameter. Approach toward the sun brightens up the comet more and more, and the nucleus usually becomes very much brighter and more starlike. Then on the sunward side of the nucleus, jetlike streamers or envelopes appear to be thrown off, often as if in parallel curved strata, or concentrically. As they expand and move outward from the nucleus, these envelopes grow fainter and are finally merged in the general nebulosity known as the comet's head, which is anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 miles in diameter. As a rule, this is an orderly development which can be watched in the telescope from hour to hour and from night to night; but occasionally a cometary visitor is quite a law to itself in development, presenting a fascinating succession of unpredictable surprises.

Then follows the development of the comet's tail, perhaps more striking than anything that has preceded it. Here a genuine repulsion from the sun appears to come into play. It may be an electrical repulsion. Much of the material projected from the comet's nucleus, seems to be driven backward or repelled by the sun, and it is this that goes to form the tail. The particles which form the tail then travel in modified paths which nevertheless can be calculated. The tail is made up of these luminous particles and it expands in s.p.a.ce much in the form of a hollow, horn-shaped cone, the nucleus being near the tip of the horn.

Some comets possess multiple tails with different degrees of curvature, Donati's for example. Usually there is a nearly straight central dark s.p.a.ce, marking the axis of the comet, and following the nucleus. But occasionally this is replaced by a thin light streak very much less in breadth than the diameter of the head. Cometary tails are sometimes 100 million miles in length.

Three different types of cometary tails are recognized. First, the long straight ones, apparently made up of matter repelled by the sun twelve to fifteen times more powerfully than gravitation attracts it. Such particles must be brushed away from the comet's head with a velocity of perhaps five miles a second, and their speed is continually increasing.

Probably these straight tails are due to hydrogen. The second type tails are somewhat curved, or plume-like, and they form the most common type of cometary tail. In them the sun's repulsion is perhaps twice its gravitational attraction, and hydrocarbons in some form appear to be responsible for tails of this character. Then there is a third type, much less often seen, short and quickly curving, probably due to heavier vapors, as of chlorine, or iron, or sodium, in which the repulsive force is only a small fraction of that of gravitation.

Many features of this theory of cometary tails are borne out by examination of their light with the spectroscope, although the investigation is as yet fragmentary. It is evident that the tail of a comet is formed at the expense of the substance of the nucleus and head; so that the matter repelled is forever dissipated through the regions of s.p.a.ce which the comet has traveled. Comets must lose much of their original substance every time they return to perihelion. Comets actually age, therefore, and grow less and less in magnitude of material as well as brightness, until they are at last opaque, nonluminous bodies which it becomes impossible to follow with the telescope.

CHAPTER XLI

WHERE DO COMETS COME FROM?

Where do comets come from? The answer to this question is not yet fully made out. Most likely they have not all had a similar origin, and theories are abundant. Apparently they come into the solar system from outer s.p.a.ce, from any direction whatsoever. The depths of interstellar s.p.a.ce seem to be responsible for most, if not all, of the new ones.

Whether they have come from other stars or stellar systems we cannot say.

While comets are tremendous in size or volume, their ma.s.s or the amount of real substance in them is relatively very slight. We know this by the effect they produce on planets that they pa.s.s near, or rather by the effect that they fail to produce. The earth's atmosphere weighs about one two hundred and fifty thousandth as much as the earth itself, but a comet's entire ma.s.s must be vastly less than this. Even if a comet were to collide with the earth head on, there is little reason to believe that dire catastrophe would ensue. At least twice the earth is known to have pa.s.sed through the tail of a comet, and the only effect noticed was upon the comet itself; its...o...b..t had been modified somewhat by the attraction of the earth. If the comet were a small one, collision with any of the planets would result in absorption and dissipation of the comet into vapor.

The whole of a large comet has perhaps as much ma.s.s or weight as a sphere of iron a hundred miles in diameter. Even this could not wreck the earth, but the effect would depend upon what part of the earth was. .h.i.t. A comet is very thin and tenuous, because its relatively small ma.s.s is distributed through a volume so enormous. So it is probable that the earth's atmosphere could scatter and burn up the invading comet, and we should have only a shower of meteors on an unprecedented scale.

Diffusion of noxious gases through the atmosphere might vitiate it to some extent, though probably not enough to cause the extinction of animal life.

Every comet has an interesting history of its own, almost indeed unique.

One of the smallest comets and the briefest in its period round the sun is known as Encke's comet. It is a telescopic comet with a very short tail, its time of revolution is about three and a half years, and it exhibits a remarkable contraction of volume on approach to the sun.

Biela's comet has a period about twice as long. At one time it pa.s.sed within about 15 million miles of the earth, and somewhere about the year 1840 this comet divided into two distinct comets, which traveled for months side by side, but later separated and both have since completely disappeared. Perhaps the most beautiful of all comets is that discovered by Donati of Florence in 1858. Its coma presented the development of jets and envelopes in remarkable perfection, and its tail was of the secondary or hydrocarbon type, but accompanied by two faint streamer tails, nearly tangential to the main tail and of the hydrogen type.

Donati's comet moves in an ellipse of extraordinary length, and it will not return to the sun for nearly 2,000 years.

The most brilliant comet of the last half century is known as the great comet of 1882. In a clear sky it could readily be seen at midday. On September 17 it pa.s.sed across the disk of the sun and was practically as bright as the surface of the sun itself. The comet had a multiple nucleus and a hydrocarbon tail of the second type, nearly a hundred million miles in length. Doubtless this great comet is a member of what is known as a cometary group, which consists of comets having the same orbit and traveling tandem round the sun. The comets of 1668, 1843, 1880, 1882 and 1887 belong to this particular group, and they all pa.s.s within 300,000 miles of the sun's surface, at a maximum velocity exceeding 300 miles a second. They must therefore invade the regions of the solar corona, the inference being that the corona as well as the comet is composed of exceedingly rare matter.

Photography of comets has developed remarkably within recent years, especially under the deft manipulation of Barnard, whose plates, in particular during his residence at the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton, California, show the features of cometary heads and tails in excellent definition. Halley's comet, at the 1910 apparition, was particularly well photographed at many observatories.

The question is often asked, When will the next comet come? If a large bright comet is meant, astronomers cannot tell. At almost any time one may blaze into prominence within only a few days. During the latter half of the last century, bright comets appeared at perihelion at intervals of eight years on the average. Several of the lesser and fainter periodic comets return nearly every year, but they are mostly telescopic, and are rarely seen except by astronomers who are particularly interested in observing them.

CHAPTER XLII

METEORS AND SHOOTING STARS

"Falling stars," or "shooting stars," have been familiar sights in all ages of the world, but the ancient philosophers thought them scarcely worthy of notice. According to Aristotle they were mere nothings of the upper atmosphere, of no more account than the general happenings of the weather. But about the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth the insufficiency of this view began to be fully recognized, and interplanetary s.p.a.ce was conceived as tenanted by shoals of moving bodies exceedingly small in ma.s.s and dimension as compared with the planets.

Millions of these bodies are all the time in collision with the outlying regions of our atmosphere; and by their impact upon it and their friction in pa.s.sing swiftly through it, they become heated to incandescence, thus creating the luminous appearances commonly known as shooting stars. For the most part they are consumed or dissipated in vapor before reaching the solid surface of the earth; but occasionally a luminous cloud or streak is left glowing in the wake of a large meteor, which sometimes remains visible for half an hour after the pa.s.sage of the meteor itself. These mistlike clouds projected upon the dark sky have been especially studied by Trowbridge of Columbia University.

Many more meteors are seen during the morning hours, say from four to six, than at any other nightly period of equal length, because the visible sky is at that time nearly centered around the general direction toward which the earth is moving in its...o...b..t round the sun; so that the number of meteors that would fall upon the earth if at rest is increased by those which the earth overtakes by its own motion. Also from January to July while the earth is traveling from perihelion to aphelion, fewer meteors are seen than in the last half of the year; but this is chiefly because of the rich showers encountered in August and November.

Although the descent of meteoric bodies from the sky was pretty generally discredited until early in the nineteenth century, such falls had nevertheless been recorded from very early times. They were usually regarded as prodigies or miracles, and such stones were commonly objects of worship among ancient peoples. For example, the Phrygian Stone, known as the "Diana of the Ephesians which fell down from Jupiter," was a famous stone built into the Kaaba at Mecca, and even to-day it is revered by Mohammedans as a holy relic. Perhaps the earliest known meteoric fall is that historically recorded in the Parian Chronicle as having occurred in the island of Crete, B. C. 1478. Also in the imperial museum of Petrograd is the Pallas or Krasnoiarsk iron, perhaps three-quarters of a ton in weight, found in 1772 by Pallas, the famous traveler, at Krasnoiarsk, Siberia.

But a fall of meteoric stones that chanced upon the department of Orne, France, in 1805, led to a critical investigation by Biot, the distinguished physicist and academician. According to his report a violent explosion in the neighborhood of L'Aigle had been heard for a distance of seventy-five miles around, and lasting five or six minutes, about 1 P. M. on Tuesday, April 26. From several adjoining towns a rapidly moving fireball had been seen in a sky generally clear, and there was absolutely no room for doubt that on the same day many stones fell in the neighborhood of L'Aigle. Biot estimated their number between two and three thousand, and they were scattered over an elliptical area more than six miles long, and two and a half miles broad. Thenceforward the descent of meteoric matter from outer s.p.a.ce upon the earth has been recognized as an unquestioned fact.

The origin of these bodies being cosmic, meteors may be expected to fall upon the earth without reference to lat.i.tude, or season, or day and night, or weather. On entering our upper atmosphere their temperature must be that of s.p.a.ce, many hundred degrees below zero; and their velocities range from ten miles per second upward. But atmospheric resistance to their flight is so great that their velocity is quickly reduced: at ground impact it does not exceed a few hundred feet per second. On January 1, 1869, several meteoric stones fell on ice only a few inches thick in Sweden, rebounding without either breaking through the ice or being themselves fractured.

Naturally the flight of a meteor through the atmosphere will be only a few seconds in duration, and owing to the sudden reduction of velocity, it will continue to be luminous throughout only the upper part of its course. Visibility generally begins at an elevation of about seventy miles, and ends at perhaps half that alt.i.tude.

What is the origin of meteors? Theories there are in great abundance: that they come from the sun, that they come from the moon, that they come from the earth in past ages as a result of volcanic action, and so on. But there are many difficulties in the way of acceptance of these and several other theories. That all meteors were originally parts of cometary ma.s.ses is however a theory that may be accepted without much hesitation.

Comets have been known to disintegrate. Biela's comet even disappeared entirely, so that during a shower of Biela meteors in November, 1885, an actual fragment of the lost comet fell upon the earth, at Mazapil, Mexico. And as the Bielid meteors encounter the earth with the relatively low velocity of ten miles a second, we may expect to capture other fragments in the future. Numerous observers saw the weird disintegration of the nucleus of the great comet of 1882, well recognized as a member of the family of the comet of 1843. As these comets are fellow voyagers through s.p.a.ce along the same orbit, probably all five members of the family, with perhaps others, were originally a single comet of unparalleled magnitude.

The Brooks comet of 1890 affords another instance of fragmentary nucleus. The oft-repeated action of solar forces tending to disrupt the ma.s.s of a comet more and more, and scatter its material throughout s.p.a.ce, the secular dismemberment of all comets becomes an obvious conclusion. During the hundreds of millions of years that these forces are known to have been operant, the original comets have been broken up in great numbers, so that elliptical rings of opaque meteoric bodies now travel round the sun in place of the comets.

These bodies in vast numbers are everywhere through s.p.a.ce, each too small to reflect an appreciable amount of sunlight, and becoming visible only when they come into collision with our outer atmosphere.

The practical ident.i.ty of several such meteor streams and cometary orbits has already been established, and there is every reason for a.s.signing a similar origin to all meteoric bodies. Meteors, then, were originally parts of comets, which have trailed themselves out to such extent that particles of the primal ma.s.ses are liable to be picked up anywhere along the original cometary paths. The historic records of all countries contain trustworthy accounts of meteoric showers. Making due allowances for the flowery imagery of the oriental, it is evident that all have at one time or another seen much the same thing. In A. D. 472, for instance, the Constantinople sky was reported alive with flying stars. In October, 1202, "stars appeared like waves upon the sky; and they flew about like gra.s.shoppers." During the reign of King William II occurred a very remarkable shower in which "stars seemed to fall like rain from heaven."

But the showers of November, 1799 and 1833, are easily the most striking of all. The sky was filled with innumerable fiery trails and there was not a s.p.a.ce in the heavens a few times the size of the moon that was not ablaze with celestial fireworks. Frequently huge meteors blended their dazzling brilliancy with the long and seemingly phosph.o.r.escent trails of the shooting stars.

The interval of thirty-four years between 1799 and 1833 appeared to indicate the possibility of a return of the shower in November of 1866 or 1867, and all the people of that day were aroused on this subject and made every preparation to witness the spectacle. Extemporized observatories were established, watchmen were everywhere on the lookout, and bells were to be rung the minute the shower began. The newspapers of the day did little to allay the fears of the mult.i.tude, but the critical days of November, 1866, pa.s.sed with disappointment in America. In Europe, however, a fine shower was seen, though it was not equal to that of 1833. The astronomers at Greenwich counted many thousand meteors. In November of 1867, however, American astronomers were gratified by a grand display, which, although failing to match the general expectation, nevertheless was a most striking spectacle, and the careful preparation for observing it afforded data of observation which were of the greatest scientific value. The actual orbits of these bodies in s.p.a.ce became known with great exact.i.tude, and it was found that their general path was identical with that of the first comet of 1866, which travels outward somewhat beyond the planet Ura.n.u.s. When the visible paths of these meteors are traced backward, all appear as if they originated from the constellation Leo. So they are known as Leonids, and a return of the shower was confidently predicted for November, 1900-1901, which for unknown reasons failed to appear.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TWO VIEWS OF HALLEY'S COMET. Taken with the same camera from the same position, one on May 12, and the other on May 15, 1910. (_Photo, Mt. Wilson Solar Observatory._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SWIFT'S COMET OF 1892. This comet showed extraordinary and rapid transformations, one day having a dozen streamers in its tail, another only two. (_Photo by Prof. E. E.

Barnard._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A LARGE METEOR TRAIL IN THE FIELD WITH FINE NEBULae.

(_Photo, Yerkes Observatory._)]

During the last half century meteors have been pretty systematically observed, especially by the astronomers of Italy and Denning of England, so that several hundred distinct showers are now known, their radiant points fall in every part of the heavens, and there is scarcely a clear moonless night when careful watching for meteors will be unrewarded.

Besides November, the months of August (Perseids), April (Lyrids), and December (Geminids) are favorable. Following in tabular form is a fairly comprehensive list of the meteoric showers of the year, with the positions of the radiant points and the epochs of the showers according to Denning:

RADIANT POINT

============================================================ Name of Shower | R. A. | Decl. | Date of Shower -----------------------+---------+--------+----------------- Quadrantids | 230 | +53 | Jan. 2-4 Zeta Cepheids | 331 | +56 | Jan. 25 Alpha Leonids | 155 | +14 | Feb. 19-March 1 Tau Leonids | 166 | +4 | March 1-4 Beta Ursids | 161 | +58 | March 13-24 Lyrids | 271 | +33 | April 20-22 Gamma Aquarids | 338 | -2 | May 1-6 Zeta Herculids | 246 | +29 | May 18-26 Eta Pegasids | 330 | +28 | May 30-June 4 Theta Bootids | 213 | +53 | June 27-28 Alpha Capricornids | 304 | -12 | July 15-28 Delta Aquarids | 339 | -11 | July 25-30 Perseids | 45 | +57 | Aug. 10-12 Omicron Draconids | 291 | +60 | Aug. 15-25 Zeta Draconids | 262 | +63 | Aug. 21-Sept. 2 Piscids | 348 | +2 | Sept. 4-14 Alpha Andromedids | 4 | +28 | Sept. 27 Epsilon Arietids | 40 | +20 | Oct. 11-24 Orionids | 92 | +15 | Oct. 17-24 Epsilon Perseids | 61 | +35 | Nov. 5 Leonids | 150 | +23 | Nov. 13-15 Epsilon Taurids | 64 | +22 | Nov. 14-25 Andromedids | 25 | +43 | Nov. 17-23 Beta Geminids | 119 | +31 | Dec. 1-12 Geminids | 108 | +33 | Dec. 1-14 Alpha Ursae Majorids | 161 | +58 | Dec. 18-21 Kappa Draconids | 194 | +68 | Dec. 18-28 ------------------------------------------------------------