C / 1618 W1

C / 1618 W1 [i]
The comet of 1618 over Augsburg
Properties of the orbit ( animation ) Period:  November 8th 1618 ( JD 2,312,334,351)
Orbit type	parabolic
Numerical eccentricity	1.0
Perihelion	0.390 AU
Inclination of the orbit plane	37.2 °
Perihelion	November 8, 1618
Orbital velocity in the perihelion	67.5 km / s
history
Explorer
Date of discovery	November 25, 1618
Older name	1618 II
Source: Unless otherwise stated, the data comes from JPL Small-Body Database Browser . Please also note the note on comet articles .

C / 1618 W1 was a comet that could be seen with the naked eye in 1618 and 1619 . Due to its extraordinary brightness and its up to 90 ° long tail, it is counted among the " Great Comets ".

It was the first comet (as well as two smaller ones of the same year) to be observed with telescopes . While leading scientists such as Kepler , Cysat , Gassendi or Snellius made exact observations, others discussed at an Ulm colloquium (so-called Ulm Comet Dispute ) whether these comets were divine signs due to the Europe-wide war that had just broken out or purely natural phenomena.

Discovery and observation

In 1618, three comets could be seen with the naked eye. The brightest of them was probably the first seen on November 25th. Two Chinese texts report that a comet was seen on the morning of November 26th (local time). Its tail was over 10 degrees long and directed southeast.

It is possible that the comet was discovered earlier, where the Spanish ambassador García de Silva Figueroa in Isfahan had seen it a day or two earlier. However, his reports are imprecise in this regard. He described it as diffuse and of the color and brightness like Venus standing in the eastern sky. Sightings also took place in Korea and the Philippines .

In Europe, the comet was observed by many astronomers from the end of November. Johannes Kepler saw it in Linz on the morning of November 29th and was able to measure its course by January 7th. The Swiss Jesuit Johann Baptist Cysat observed the comet from Ingolstadt between December 1st and January 22nd. On December 9th, he reported a tail length of 70 °.

The Dane Longomontanus , a pupil of Tycho Brahe , observed a tail of 104 ° in Copenhagen on December 10th , while the Jesuit Orazio Grassi (1582-1654) in Rome on December 12th estimated a tail length of about 60 °. Other observers were Pierre Gassendi in Aix-en-Provence , Wilhelm Schickard in Württemberg , Snellius in Leiden and others.

The comet reached a magnitude of 0 to 1 mag on November 29th .

Superstition

As was customary at the time, this comet was also seen in a flood of writings as an ominous harbinger of various misfortunes and as a warning and “rod of anger” sent by God (see fear of comets ). In a Thuringian chronicle it was said: “On November 3rd, 1618 a terrible compet appeared in the sky, the fatal month and even into the following year; for war, riot, bloodshed, pestilentz and precious time and inexpressible misfortune ensued all over the world. You can't feel a terrible comet that doesn't bring great misfortune. "

In retrospect, but no later than around 1630, the comet of 1618 was interpreted as a sign of the Thirty Years' War .

Scientific evaluation

The comet of 1618 over Heidelberg at night

The comets of 1618 were the first to be observed with such instruments after the invention of the telescope . In addition to more precise observation of their appearance, this also enabled much more precise measurement of their positions in the sky, which should later facilitate the calculation of the orbital elements .

Johannes Kepler wrote about the three comets of the year 1618 in his De cometis libelli tres (1619) and in it linked to a knowledge of Brahe and Mastlin . In 1577 the two professors succeeded in determining the parallax of comet C / 1577 V1 . They were able to prove that the comets are not structures in the earth's atmosphere , but real celestial bodies that move on circular paths. In contrast, however, Kepler defended his assumption of a straight cometary motion. Like his predecessors, he traced the formation of comets back to condensation in the ether .

In Ulm a dispute broke out between the mathematician and engineer Johannes Faulhaber and the doctor and philosopher Johann Remmelin on the one hand and the director of the Ulm grammar school Johann Baptist Hebenstreit , the pastor Zimbertus Wehe and the mathematician Johannes Krafft on the other. Shortly after the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, the question was whether the comets that appeared in the sky in 1618 were "wonderful signs" that heralded the wrath of God and his punishment, or whether they were natural phenomena without any influence were on war and death, hunger and misery. On October 18, 1619, a colloquium of a number of scientists, including the mathematician René Descartes, took place in Ulm to clarify the issues at stake . It is said that this colloquium, which went down in history as the Ulm comet dispute, “had a thoroughly conciliatory outcome ... with the promise to respect each other as Christian brothers in the future”, which can probably be interpreted as a draw.

The astronomical discoveries of the past few years had also caused a rethink among the Jesuits. They defended the traditional philosophy and worldview of Aristotle and Brahe, but now held the opinion that comets are celestial bodies that orbit the sun and can be found far from the earth on the other side of the moon. When the comet of 1618 appeared, it was observed and studied with great care at the Collegio Romano . Observations from other Jesuits from across Europe were also compiled. The research results were published by the professor of mathematics Orazio Grassi in his treatise Libra astronomica ac philosophica 1619. It appeared under the pseudonym Lotario Sarsi Sölkerano and he attacked Galileo Galilei directly with it.

Galileo took the position that traditional views hindered science. However, he interpreted the comets as near-Earth optical effects (reflection phenomena) in the atmosphere. For health reasons, he had not been able to observe the comet of 1618 himself and could therefore not base his theory on his own measurements. When his youth and college friend Maffeo Barberini took up the pontificate as Pope Urban VIII a few years later , he immediately dedicated his work Il Saggiatore (1623) to him, which made a massive polemic against Grassi and defended the Copernican system . He thus acquired the momentous hostility of the Inquisition .

Orbit

For the comet, due to the limited number of observations, only a parabolic orbit with limited precision could be determined, which is inclined by around 37 ° to the ecliptic . At the point of the orbit closest to the sun ( perihelion ), which the comet traversed on November 8, 1618, it was located at a distance of 58.3 million km between the orbits of Mercury and Venus . By October 19, it had already come close to Venus within 61 million km. On December 6th, it approached the earth within about 0.36 AU / 53.5 million km.

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

Reception in literature

The comet of 1618 had sparked wild speculation in England about its possible auspicious significance. Some saw it as divine disapproval of King James I's efforts to establish a marriage alliance with Spain . The English king was concerned about the political implications of these speculations and wrote a poem alluding to the gullibility of the people:

You men of Britaine, wherefore gaze yee so
Uppon an Angry starr, whenh as yee know
The sun shall turne to darknesse, the Moon to blood
And then twill be to late for to turne good
O be so happy then while time doth last
As to remember Dooms day is not past
and misinterpret not, with vaine Conceit
The Caracter you see on Heaven gate.
Which though it bring the world some news from fate
The letters such as no man can translate
And for to guesse at God Almightys minde
Where such a thing might Cozen all mankinde
Wherfore I wish the Curious man to keep
His rash Imaginations till he sleepe
Then let him dreame of Famine plague & war
And thinke the match with spaine hath causd this star
Or let them thinke that if their Prince my Minion
Will shortly chang, or which is worse religion
And that he may have nothing elce to feare
Let him walke Pauls, and meet the Devills there
And if he be a Puritan, and scapes
Jesuites, salute them in their proper shapes
These Jealousys I would not have a Treason
In him whose Fancy overrules his Reason
Yet to be sure It did no harme, Twere fit
He would be bold to pray for no more witt
But onely to Conceale his dreame, for there
Be those that will beleive what he dares feare.

See also

• List of comets
• Great comet

literature

• Andreas Bähr: "The cruel comet. Heavenly signs and world events in the Thirty Years War", Reinbek 2017, ISBN 978-3-498-00679-2

Web links

• Deutschlandfunk Nova: Celestial Signs in the Thirty Years War The Cruel Comet , cultural-historical lecture on the comet (podcast)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Elias Ehinger: Iudicium Astrologicum From the Newen Cometa… . Augsburg, around 1621.
2. ^ GW Kronk: Cometography - A Catalog of Comets, Volume 1. Ancient - 1799 . Cambridge University Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-521-58504-0 , pp. 338-340.
3. ^ AG Pingré: Cométographie ou Traité historique et théorique des comètes . Tome II, Paris, 1784, pp. 7-9.
4. ^ Donald K. Yeomans: NASA JPL Solar System Dynamics: Great Comets in History. Retrieved June 17, 2014 . 
5. ^ Volkmar Happe: Chronicon Thuringiae . T. I Bl. 24v. ( online )
6. ↑ Kirstin Bentley: "Help us here". The comet of 1618. Contemporary perception and interpretations based on personal testimonies from the south of the German-speaking area (abstract). (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; accessed on May 2, 2014 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
7. ↑ Matthäus Merian: Theatrum Europaeum . 3rd ed., Vol. 1, 1662, p. 101.
8. ↑ Martha List: Kepler, Johannes . In: Neue Deutsche Biographie , 11, 1977, pp. 494–508.
9. ↑ Ivo Schneider: God's miracle or a completely natural appearance. The comet war of 1618 . In: Damals , Heft 12, 1994, pp. 32-39.
10. ↑ C / 1618 W1 in the Small-Body Database of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (English).
11. ↑ SOLEX 11.0 A. Vitagliano. Archived from the original on September 18, 2015 ; accessed on May 2, 2014 . 
12. ↑ Early Stuart Libels - Ni Prophecy and portent c.1618-1623. Retrieved June 25, 2014 .