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Updated: May 13, 2025
Signs of internal agitation, however, were not wanting. Each fragment threw out a short tail in a direction perpendicular to the line joining their centres, and each developed a bright nucleus, although the original comet had exhibited neither of these signs of cometary vitality.
At Potsdam, the bright yellow line was perceived with astonishment by Vogel on May 31, and was next evening identified with Fraunhofer's "D." Its character led him to infer a very considerable density in the glowing vapour emitting it. Hasselberg founded an additional argument in favour of the electrical origin of cometary light on the changes in the spectrum of comet Wells.
In the mean time Olmsted's idea of a cometary relationship of the meteors was demonstrated to be correct by the researches of Schiaparelli and others, who showed that not only the November meteors, but those of August, which are seen more or less abundantly every year, traveled in the tracks of well-known comets, and had undoubtedly an identical origin with those comets.
This was at first so vividly continuous, that the characteristic cometary bands could scarcely be detached from their bright background.
"There is something sad," said Cortlandt, "about the end of everything, but I am more sorry to leave Saturn than I have ever been in taking leave of any other place." When beyond the limits of the atmosphere they applied the full current, and were soon once more cleaving the ether at cometary speed, their motion towards the sun being aided by that great body itself.
This is rendered more probable by the unexampled spectacle offered, October 14, to Professor Barnard, then of Nashville, Tennessee, of six or eight distinct cometary masses within 6° south by west of the comet's head, none of which reappeared on the next opportunity for a search. A week later, however, one similar object was discerned by Mr. W. R. Brooks, in the opposite direction from the comet.
Yet the depth of cometary matter through which such faint stellar rays penetrated undimmed, was, near the central parts of the globe, not less than 50,000 miles.
His attention was directed by Arago to the Uranian difficulty in 1845, when he cheerfully put aside certain intricate cometary researches upon which he happened to be engaged, in order to obey with dutiful promptitude the summons of the astronomical chief of France. The question was now visibly approaching an issue.
It lies in the path, certainly defined and determined by observers, of a small cometary mass, which will plunge upon it a rain of rock and iron. Even now this approaching body grows more and more visible in the sky. The astronomers are working at the problem, hoping some deflection, some interpositional mercy will carry off this disturbing incidence.
With an elaborate care inspired by his youthful ardour, though hardly merited by their loose nature, Bessel deduced from them an orbit for that celebrated body, and presented the work to Olbers, whose reputation in cometary researches gave a special fitness to the proffered homage.
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