C / 1865 B1 (Great Southern Comet)
| C / 1865 B1 (Great Southern Comet) [i] | |
|---|---|
| Properties of the orbit ( animation ) | |
| Orbit type | parabolic |
| Numerical eccentricity | 1.0 |
| Perihelion | 0.0258 AU |
| Inclination of the orbit plane | 92.5 ° |
| Perihelion | January 14, 1865 |
| Orbital velocity in the perihelion | 262.0 km / s |
| history | |
| Explorer | Francis Abbott |
| Date of discovery | January 17, 1865 |
| Older name | 1865 I. |
| Source: Unless otherwise stated, the data comes from JPL Small-Body Database Browser . Please also note the note on comet articles . | |
C / 1865 B1 (Great Southern Comet ) was a comet that could be seen with the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere in 1865 . Due to its extraordinary brightness, it is counted among the " Great Comets ".
Discovery and observation
Francis Abbott , an amateur astronomer from Hobart , Tasmania , discovered this comet on January 17, 1865, deep on the southwestern horizon between clouds. The comet's tail had at that time already a length from 10 to 12 ° . In the following nights there were other independent discoveries of the comet in Chile , Australia , South Africa and Brazil .
The comet had just passed its perihelion and its closest approach to Earth when it was discovered and could initially be observed with the naked eye until the end of January. Robert Ellery in Australia, however, described it as "not nearly as bright" as C / 1858 L1 (Donati) . The greatest length of the straight, narrow and conical tail was reported at 25 ° on January 21st, towards the end of the month it was still around 17 °.
Only in the further course of February could the comet be observed again with the naked eye. At the beginning of March the tail was barely ½ ° long and observations were soon only possible with telescopes . Only William Mann at the Cape of Good Hope was able to follow the comet telescopically in April and until May 2nd.
The comet reached a magnitude of 1 mag on January 24th .
Orbit
Felix Koerber could only determine a parabolic orbit for the comet from the observation data over a period of 102 days , which is inclined by around 92 ° to the ecliptic . The comet thus runs on an orbit that is almost perpendicular to the orbits of the planets. At the point of the orbit closest to the sun ( perihelion ), which the comet traversed on January 14, 1865, it was only 4 ½ solar radii above its surface at a distance of 3.87 million km . Just one day later, on January 15, it had reached the closest approach to Earth at 0.94 AU / 141.2 million km, and on January 16 it was still 99.7 million km away from Venus .
When the comet appeared in 1865, the eccentricity of its orbit was not significantly changed. It is unlikely to return to the inner solar system , or will return many tens or hundreds of thousands of years later .
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gary W. Kronk : Cometography - A Catalog of Comets, Volume 2. 1800-1899 . Cambridge University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-521-58505-8 , pp. 335-338.
- ^ Donald K. Yeomans: NASA JPL Solar System Dynamics: Great Comets in History. Retrieved June 17, 2014 .
- ↑ C / 1865 B1 (Great Southern Comet) 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 .