All the preceding drawings have been from naked-eye views; but if
the reader would like to look more closely, he can see on page 217
one taken on the night of October 5th through the great telescope
at Cambridge, Mass. We will leave this to tell its own story, only
remarking that it is not possible to reproduce the phantom-like
faintness of the original spur, here also distinctly seen, or indeed
to indicate fairly the infinite tenuity of the tail itself. Though
millions of miles thick, the faintest star is yet perceptibly undimmed
by it, and in estimating the character and quantity of matter it
contains, after noting that it is not self-luminous, but shines
only like the moon by reflected sunlight, we may recall the acute
observation of Sir Isaac Newton where he compares the brightness of a
comet’s tail with that of the light reflected from the particles in a
sunbeam an inch or two thick, in a darkened room, and, after observing
that if a little sphere of common air one inch in diameter were
rarified to the degree which must obtain at only four thousand miles
from the earth’s surface it would fill all the regions of the planets
to far beyond the orbit of Saturn, suggests the excessively small
quantity of vapor that is really requisite to create this prodigious
phantom.
The writer has had occasion for many years to make a special study of
the reflection of light from the sky; and if such studies may authorize
him to express any opinion of his own, he would give his adhesion to
the remark of Sir John Herschel, that the actual weight of matter in
such a cometary tail may be conceivably only an affair of pounds or
even ounces. But if this is true of the tail, it does not follow of
the nucleus, just seen in this picture, but of which the engraving on
page 205 gives a much more magnified view. It is a sketch of the head
alone, taken from a telescopic view on the 24th of September. Here the
direction of the comet is still toward the sun (which must be supposed
to be some indefinite distance beyond the upper part of the drawing),
and we see that the lucid matter appears to be first jetted up, and
then forced backward on either side, as if by a wind _from_ the sun,
to form the tail, presenting successive crescent-shaped envelopes of
decreasing brightness, which are not symmetrical, but one-sided, while
sometimes the appearance is that of spurts of luminous smoke, wavering
as if thrown out of particular parts of the internal nucleus “like a
squib not held fast.” Down the centre of the tail runs a wonderfully
straight black line, like a shadow cast from the nucleus. Only the
nucleus itself still evades us, and even in this, the most magnified
view which the most powerful telescope till lately in existence could
give, remains a point.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account