C / 1898 L1 (Coddington-Pauly)

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C / 1898 L1 (Coddington-Pauly) [i]
Properties of the orbit ( animation )
Epoch:  September 28, 1898 ( JD 2,414,560.5)
Orbit type hyperbolic
Numerical eccentricity 1,00093
Perihelion 1,701 AU
Inclination of the orbit plane 69.9 °
Perihelion September 14, 1898
Orbital velocity in the perihelion 32.3 km / s
history
Explorer Edwin F. Coddington , Wolfgang Pauly
Date of discovery June 10, 1898
Older name 1898 VII, 1898c
Source: Unless otherwise stated, the data comes from JPL Small-Body Database Browser . Please also note the note on comet articles .

C / 1898 L1 (Coddington-Pauly) is a comet that could be observed in 1898 and 1899.

Discovery and observation

Most comets today are discovered photographically . In the 19th century this was only the case with a few comets. This comet was discovered on June 11, 1898 by Edwin Foster Coddington at the Lick Observatory on a photo plate that he had taken on the evening of June 9 (local time). The photo plate could not be developed until two days later and Coddington found a strange line on it near Antares . That it was a comet was then confirmed visually on the same evening by him and his colleague William Joseph Hussey using a telescope . Independently of this, the comet was also found on the evening of June 14th, 1898 by Wolfgang Pauly in Bucharest , who had no knowledge of the previous discovery, although the comet was already observed on June 13th and 14th by the European observatories, which have since been informed .

In the further course of June the comet was intensively observed and also photographed at observatories in Europe, South and North America. At that time the comet had a brightness of 8–9 mag, a pronounced tail could not be determined. As the comet continued towards its closest point to the Sun, it moved south in the sky and in July could only be seen by two astronomers in the northern hemisphere . For the rest of the year, the comet was then only tracked from the southern hemisphere. a. by John Tebbutt in Windsor (New South Wales) , who was able to observe him until March 3, 1899. Now visible again to observers in the northern hemisphere, the comet was only observed by Coddington from the beginning to the end of February and occasionally in August and September. The last determination of his position was finally achieved on December 7, 1899.

The comet never achieved sufficient brightness to be seen with the naked eye.

Scientific evaluation

The comet's spectrum was observed by William Wallace Campbell and William Hammond Wright at the Lick Observatory in June 1898 . They were able to determine the comet-typical emission lines of carbon (C 2 ).

The first hyperbolic orbit with the inclusion of observations over the entire visibility period of the comet and consideration of orbital disturbances caused by Venus , Earth , Jupiter and Saturn were calculated by Charles J. Merfield as early as 1901 . Based on these calculations, Erik Sinding was able to confirm in a study from 1953 that the comet definitely left the solar system on a hyperbolic orbit , whereas it was assumed that the comet's origin lies in the solar system.

In a 1978 study, Marsden , Sekanina, and Everhart also found the original orbit to be elliptical before traversing the inner solar system . A hyperbolic shape has been confirmed for the comet's future orbit.

The orbital elements of comet C / 1898 L1 were used alongside those of 18 other extremely long-period comets by Jan Hendrik Oort to derive his hypothesis of the Oort comet cloud .

Orbit

A hyperbolic orbit could be determined for the comet from 69 observation data over a period of 1 ½ years through Sekanina, which is inclined by around 70 ° to the ecliptic . At the point of the orbit closest to the sun ( perihelion ), which the comet traversed on September 14, 1898, it was located at a distance of about 254.6 million km from the sun, slightly outside the range of the orbit of Mars . On June 19, it had already reached the closest approach to Earth with 1.08 AU / 161.4 million km.

According to the orbital elements afflicted with a certain uncertainty, its orbit before its passage through the inner solar system in 1898 still had an eccentricity of about 0.99990 and a semi-major axis of about 14,700 AU, so that its orbit period was about 1.8 million years . It may have been a “dynamic new” comet from the Oort cloud, or had only come close to the sun a few times before. However, due to the gravitational pull of the planets, especially when they passed Saturn on January 11, 1898 in about 7 ⅓ AU and on Jupiter on April 20, 1898 in about 4 ¾ AU, the eccentricity of its orbit was reduced to a value of about 1.00123 enlarged so that it is now moving away on a hyperbolic orbit. The comet will therefore no longer return to the inner solar system.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ RJM Olsen, JM Pasachoff: Fire in the Sky: Comets and Meteors, the Decisive Centuries, in British Art and Science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1998, ISBN 0-521-63060-6 , pp. 256-257.
  2. ↑ Comet c 1898. In: The Astronomical Journal. Vol. 19, No. 439, 1898, p. 52, bibcode : 1898AJ ..... 19 ... 52. .
  3. ^ Further news about the Comet Coddington-Pauly. In: Astronomical News. Vol. 146, No. 3500, 1898, pp. 355-356, bibcode : 1898AN .... 146..355. .
  4. ↑ J. Tebbutt: Observations of Comet Coddington (c 1898). In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Vol. LIX, No. 2, 1898, pp. 93-99, bibcode : 1898MNRAS..59 ... 93T .
  5. ^ J. Tebbutt: Further Observations of Comet Coddington (c 1898). In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Vol. LIX, No. 7, 1899, pp. 388-392, bibcode : 1899MNRAS..59..388T .
  6. ↑ a b G. W. Kronk: Cometography - A Catalog of Comets, Volume 2. 1800-1899 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003, ISBN 0-521-58505-8 , pp. 766-769.
  7. ^ CJ Merfield: Definitive Orbit Elements of Comet 1898 VII. In: Astronomical News. Vol. 154, No. 3684, 1901, pp. 229-268, bibcode : 1901AN .... 154..229M .
  8. ^ E. Sinding: The future orbit of comet 1898 VII (Coddington-Pauly). In: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Matematisk-fysiske Meddelelser. bd. 27, no. 11, 1953, pp. 1-13, bibcode : 1953PCopO.161 .... 1S .
  9. ↑ a b B. G. Marsden, Z. Sekanina, E. Everhart: New Osculating Orbits for 110 Comets and Analysis of Original Orbits for 200 Comets. In: The Astronomical Journal. Vol. 83, no. 1, 1978, pp. 64-71 doi: 10.1086 / 112177 , bibcode : 1978AJ ..... 83 ... 64M .
  10. ^ JH Oort: The Structure of the Cloud of Comets Surrounding the Solar System, and a Hypothesis Concerning Its Origin. In: Bulletin of the Astronomical Institutes of the Netherlands. Vol. 11, No. 408, 1950, pp. 91-110, bibcode : 1950BAN .... 11 ... 91O .
  11. ^ PA Dybczyński: On the famous Oort table. Retrieved November 18, 2015 .
  12. ↑ C / 1898 L1 (Coddington-Pauly) in the Small-Body Database of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (English).Template: JPL Small-Body Database Browser / Maintenance / Alt
  13. ↑ SOLEX 11.0 A. Vitagliano. Archived from the original on September 18, 2015 ; accessed on May 2, 2014 .