C / 1577 V1 (Great Comet of 1577)
| C / 1577 V1 [i] | |
|---|---|
| Properties of the orbit ( animation ) | |
| Orbit type | parabolic |
| Numerical eccentricity | 1.0 |
| Perihelion | 0.178 AU |
| Inclination of the orbit plane | 104.9 ° |
| Perihelion | October 27, 1577 |
| Orbital velocity in the perihelion | 100 km / s |
| history | |
| Explorer | |
| Date of discovery | November 2, 1577 |
| Older name | 1577 I. |
| Source: Unless otherwise stated, the data comes from JPL Small-Body Database Browser . Please also note the note on comet articles . | |
C / 1577 V1 (Great Comet of 1577) was a comet that could be seen with the naked eye around the turn of the year 1577/1578 . Due to its extraordinary brightness, it is counted among the " Great Comets ".
The comet plays an important role in the history of cometary research because it has been conclusively proven for the first time that it is outside the earth's atmosphere .
Discovery and observation
The discovery of the comet cannot be precisely determined. There are second-hand reports from many contemporary and later astronomers that are difficult to back up with other reports. The comet was probably first seen in Central America on the evening of November 1st (local time) , as Mexican texts prove. At the time it had only passed through its perihelion a few days earlier and was in the constellation Wolf , 0.77 AU from Earth and 0.28 AU from the Sun again .
A Japanese text also reports the sighting of a comet on November 8th. The comet had a tail of 50 ° length and was "as bright as the moon" .
The Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe gave a detailed account of his own observations of the comet and those of other European observers. He wrote that on November 9, a comet was seen by sailors in the Baltic Sea . On November 10th, Bartholomäus Scultetus saw him in Görlitz , who described him as a “large, luminous ball that spat fire and ended in smoke” . The Slovak teacher and astronomer Jakub Pribicer (1539–1582) in Banská Bystrica saw him on the same day in the constellation Capricorn . Brahe summarized several observations made on November 11th, in which he described it as a comet with a very long and curved tail of a dark reddish color, like "a flame penetrating smoke" . On the same day the comet was seen by the Danish professor Jørgen Dybvad and by Georg Busch in Erfurt . The following day Michael Maestlin saw him in Tübingen , who reported a 30 ° long tail, and Andreas Nolthius in Einbeck .
Brahe first saw the comet on November 13th. He was catching fish with a net and looking west across the sea. He wrote: “I saw a certain bright star in this direction which appeared as clearly as Venus when it is near the earth and is observed before sunset or after sunrise. The rays or the hair of the star were not yet visible because the sun, still above the horizon, completely extinguished the weak brightness of its rays. ” After sunset he could then see the almost 22 ° long and 2.5 ° wide tail of red Recognize rays.
That evening Thaddaeus Hagecius saw him in Prague , and the next day Helisäus Röslin in Germany and the city doctor Nicolas Bazel in Bergues near Dunkerque . Tycho Brahe determined the position of the comet throughout November, to which positions were also reported by Bazel and Valentin Steinmetz . On November 28th, Cornelis Gemma reported from Leuven of two tails.
In December the comet's brightness decreased. On December 1st, Hagecius gave a tail length of 7 °. Nolthius watched him until the end of the month. In January the number of observations then fell sharply. Mastlin was still able to see it on January 8th, but no longer on January 14th. Brahe was barely able to observe the comet with his instruments on January 13th and saw it for the last time on January 26th.
In the Ottoman Empire , the comet was observed by Taqiy ad-Dīn , the court astronomer of Sultan Murād III , in his observatory in Istanbul .
The Chinese reported their first sighting on November 14th. They reported that the comet could be seen for a month through mid-December. There are similar reports from Korea .
The work of Tychoni's Brahe Dani Opera omnea contains the results that Brahe drew from his observations:
- He claimed that the comet's tail was caused by the rays of the sun, which shine through the comet's body, thereby always pointing away from the sun.
- He tried to take accurate measurements of the comet's parallax and concluded that the comet was at least 230 radii away from the earth .
- From measurements of the diameter of the coma in connection with the distance from the earth, he concluded that the diameter of the comet is ¼ of the diameter of the earth, while the tail is 70,000 German miles (about 500,000 km) long.
He also made sketches that were still based on a geocentric view of the world, and found that his orbit must have brought him close to the planet Venus .
Hagecius, Scultetus, Nolthius, and Busch disagreed and saw the comet closer to Earth than the moon , but Mastlin, Gemma, and Röslin agreed with Brahe that the comet was farther away than the moon. Mastlin and Brahe thought the comet was a temporary object that eventually disappeared from view, while Jeremiah Horrocks from England saw the comet's origin in the sun, where it would fall back again.
Orbit
Due to the uncertain observation data, only a parabolic orbit could be determined for the comet , which is inclined by around 105 ° to the ecliptic . Its orbit is thus almost perpendicular to the orbits of the planets . At the point of the orbit closest to the sun ( perihelion ), which the comet passed on October 27, 1577, it was located at a distance of about 26.6 million km from the sun, well within the orbit of Mercury . Almost two days later, on October 29, it came within 104 million km of Venus , and on November 10, it came within 0.63 AU / 94 million km of Earth .
The comet is unlikely to return to the inner solar system , or will return many tens or hundreds of thousands of years .
See also
literature
- Clarisse Doris Hellman : The Comet of 1577: Its Place in the History of Astronomy. Columbia University Press 1944. Reprinted 1971 as No. 510 in the Columbia University studies in the social sciences series. ISBN 0-404-51510-X
- Valentin Steinmetz : From the comet who was available in November of the 1577th jars / and can still be seen in the sky / how he departed from evening and noon / towards morning and midnight / had a departure / oberut and write in Leiptzig. Augsburg / Magdeburg / Leipzig 1577 (3 different prints, digitized edition Augsburg ).
Web links
- Bernd Pfeiffer: A “peacock tail” in the sky? The influence of comet observations around 1600. (Oct. 13, 2013; PDF; 3.5 MB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jakobus Pribicer: Tractatus de cometa, qvi svb finem anni a nato Christo 1577. conspectus est . Continens simul breuem eamq [ue] generalem expositionem de causis Cometarum. Christoph Scultetus, Banská Bystrica 1578.
- ↑ Also Petrus Baselius; from Nieuwkerke.
- ↑ See Nicolas Bazel: Prognosticon nouum, anni huius calamitosissimi 1578. Cvm descriptione Cometae visi 14 Nouembris anni elapsi , Autore D. Nicolao Bazelio, Bergensium S. Guinochi Medico Chirurgo. Henricus Henricius, Antwerp 1578 ( Google Books ) = Prognostication nouuelle, de cest an calamiteux 1578. Also description de la Comete veuë le 14th de Nouembre en l'an paßé . Par M. Nicolas Bazel, Medecin & Chirurgien de Bergues S. Winoch, en Flandres. Henry Heyndricx, Antwerp 1578.
- ↑ Tofigh Heidarzadeh: A History of Physical Theories of Comets From Aristotle to Whipple . Springer, New York, 1999, ISBN 978-1-4020-8322-8 , p. 32.
- ^ Gary W. Kronk : Cometography - A Catalog of Comets, Volume 1. Ancient - 1799 . Cambridge University Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-521-58504-0 , pp. 317-320.
- ↑ C / 1577 V1 (Great Comet of 1577) in the Small-Body Database of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (English).
- ↑ SOLEX 11.0 A. Vitagliano. Archived from the original on September 18, 2015 ; accessed on May 2, 2014 .