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This luminous suggestion was held more or less in abeyance for half a century. Then it was elaborated by Zollner, and particularly by Bredichin, of the Moscow observatory, into what has since been regarded as the most plausible of cometary theories. It is held that comets and the sun are similarly electrified, and hence mutually repulsive.
While semi-extinct, in 1882-84, it lost little motion; but a fresh access of retardation was observed by Professor Young in connection with its brightening in 1886. This suggests very strongly that the red spot is fed from below. A shining aureola of "faculæ," described by Bredichin at Moscow, and by Lohse at Potsdam, as encircling it in September, 1879, was held to strengthen the solar analogy.
The hypothesis also falls in with the researches of Bredichin, who has divided the tails of comets into three principal classes viz.: Those which appear as long, straight rays; Those which have the form of curved plumes or scimitars; Those which are short, brushy, and curved sharply backward along the comet's path.
From study of atomic weights and estimates of the velocity of thrust of cometary tails, Bredichin concluded that the chief components of the various kinds of tails are hydrogen, hydrocarbons, and the vapor of iron; and spectroscopic analysis goes far towards sustaining these assumptions. But, theories aside, the unsubstantialness of the comet's tail has been put to a conclusive test.
According to Bredichin, the straight tail must have been composed of hydrogen, and the other of some form of hydro-carbon whose atoms are heavier than those of hydrogen, and, consequently, when swept away by the storm of light-waves, followed a curvature depending upon the resultant of the forces operating upon them.
In fact, I almost forgot my awful situation in the interest awakened by the phenomena of the comet. I was in the midst of its very head. I was one of its component particles. I was a meteor among a million millions of others. If I could only get back to the earth, what news could I not carry to Signor Schiaparelli and Mr. Lockyer and Dr. Bredichin about the composition of comets!
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