C / 1402 D1

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C / 1402 D1 [i]
Properties of the orbit ( animation )
Epoch:  March 30, 1402 ( JD 2,233,217.5)
Orbit type parabolic
Numerical eccentricity 1.0
Perihelion 0.38 AU
Inclination of the orbit plane 55 °
Perihelion March 21, 1402
Orbital velocity in the perihelion 68 km / s
history
Explorer
Date of discovery February 8, 1402 (?)
Older name 1402
Source: Unless otherwise stated, the data comes from JPL Small-Body Database Browser . Please also note the note on comet articles .

C / 1402 D1 was a comet that could be seen with the naked eye in 1402 . It is counted among the " Great Comets " due to its extraordinary brightness .

Discovery and Visibility

There are many partly contradicting reports about allegedly several comets that are said to have appeared between 1400 and 1403. Presumably all of these reports contain errors in the timing, so that they all refer to the great comet from the beginning of 1402.

The comet appeared at the beginning of Lent and was possibly first discovered on February 8, 1402 (so its name should be correctly C / 1402 C1). It was initially only weak and was therefore only gradually seen for the first time by other observers all over Europe over the course of the next two to three weeks.

Jakobus Angelus from Ulm reported in his Tractatus de Cometis that around the beginning of February a comet appeared in Swabia for several days. He was first seen in Ulm on March 15th. It appeared larger than Venus as a morning star , but not as bright. Its color was "metallic", like the color of Venus.

It stood in the south in the evening and went under in the west. Its size and brightness increased every day as it approached the sun. During March, it was seen in the daytime sky next to the sun for eight days, the longest reported daytime visibility for a comet. Since it was not unusually close to Earth, this suggests an unusually active comet. The tail had a fan-like appearance with multiple rays. He could be observed until mid-April.

There are also reports of his observation from Japan and Constantinople .

The comet reached a magnitude of −3 mag on March 12th .

Unsurprisingly, the huge tail star was associated with all sorts of accidents and acts of war, a Braunschweig chronicle mentions briefly and succinctly: In düssem jare stod a comete with a long star, de brought starven unde vele kriges . In England the comet was seen as a portent of the Battle of Shrewsbury , in Central Europe it was associated with King Ruprecht's failed campaign to Italy , or the death of the Milanese ruler Gian Galeazzo Visconti .

Orbit

For the comet, only an uncertain parabolic orbit could be determined because of the few observations made , which is inclined by around 55 ° to the ecliptic . At the point of the orbit closest to the sun ( perihelion ), which the comet passed around March 21, 1402, it was located at a distance of about 57 million km from the sun in the area of ​​the orbit of Mercury . By February 19, it had already come close to Earth to around 0.70 AU / 105 million km. Around April 7th, it still approached Venus within about 78 million km.

The comet is unlikely to return to the inner solar system , or will return many tens or hundreds of thousands of years .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. Dr. Helmolt: The Comet from spring 1402 . In: Astronomische Nachrichten No. 3090 , Vol. 129, 1892, pp. 301-306. ( bibcode : 1892AN .... 129..301H )
  2. David J. Eicher: COMETS! Visitors from Deep Space . Cambridge University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-1-107-62277-7 , pp. 30-31.
  3. ^ AG Pingré: Cométographie ou Traité historique et théorique des comètes . Tome I, Paris, 1783, pp. 446-452.
  4. ^ Donald K. Yeomans: NASA JPL Solar System Dynamics: Great Comets in History. Retrieved June 6, 2014 .
  5. Dr. Helmolt: Supplements to "The Comet from Spring 1402" in AN 3090 . In: Astronomische Nachrichten No. 3202 , Vol. 134, 1893, pp. 163-164. ( bibcode : 1893AN .... 134..163H )
  6. C / 1402 D1 in the Small-Body Database of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (English).Template: JPL Small-Body Database Browser / Maintenance / Alt
  7. SOLEX 11.0 A. Vitagliano. Archived from the original on September 18, 2015 ; accessed on May 2, 2014 .