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Updated: May 28, 2025
Below, the timer reached zero. A mighty fan of fire shot into space. The asteroid shuddered from the blast, then swerved gradually, picking up speed as well as new direction. Rip swallowed hard. Now they were committed. They would reach a new perihelion far beyond the limits of safety. P for perihelion and P for peril. In this case, they were the same thing!
For that little planet it would indeed be a jump from the frying pan into the fire, because, as it rushed to perihelion, Mercury would plunge more than 2,500,000 miles beneath the surface of the giant star. Venus and the earth would melt like snowflakes at the mouth of a furnace. Even far-away Neptune, the remotest member of the system, would swelter in torrid heat. But stop! Look at the sky.
The season wore on to its perihelion a period, the scientific books advise us, of the highest clang and crash of speed and whirl, of the greatest brilliancy and deepest glow of a planet's existence. The business of life, the pursuit of pleasure, and the scientific demolition of our common enemy, Time, received all the care which such matters require.
The southern observers watched it go right into the sun, when it instantly disappeared. What had happened was that the comet in passing its perihelion point had swung exactly between the earth and the sun. On the following morning it was seen from all parts of the world close by the sun on the opposite side, and it remained thus visible for three days, gradually receding from the solar disk.
But this heat, capable of vitrifying terrestrial matters, and of evaporating water, would have formed a thick circle of clouds which would have lessened the excessive heat, hence there would be compensation between the cold of the aphelion and the heat of the perihelion, and an average probably supportable." "At what number of degrees do they estimate the temperature of the planetary space?"
The crops had ripened rapidly during the excessive heat of January, when the orbit of Gallia was being traversed at its perihelion, and were now exposed to the depredations of many thousands of birds; and although a goodly number of stacks attested the industry of Ben Zoof during the time of the Dobryna's voyage, it was only too apparent that the portion of the harvest that remained ungathered was liable to the most imminent risk of being utterly devoured.
These tables have, however, been deviating from the true motion of the planet, owing to the motion of the perihelion of Mercury, subsequently discovered by Le Verrier himself. They are now much less accurate than the newer tables published by Le Verrier ten years later. Of Venus new tables were constructed by Mr. Hill in 1872.
Thus multiple tails are developed when the same comet throws off, as it approaches perihelion, specifically distinct substances. The long, straight ray which proceeded from the comet of 1807, for example, was doubtless made up of particles subject to a much more vigorous solar repulsion than those formed into the shorter curved emanation issuing from it nearly in the same direction.
At perihelion, when in opposition with the earth, it is 35 millions of miles from the earth, and its surface, as is well known from the drawings of Kaiser, the Leyden astronomer, and of Schiaparelli, Denning, Perrotin and Terby, has apparently revealed an alternation of land and water which, with the assumption of meteorological conditions, such as prevail on the earth, has gradually made it easy to think of its occupation by rational beings as altogether possible.
All doubt as to the fact may be said to have been removed by Signor Zezioli's observation of the annual shower in more than usual abundance at Bergamo, November 30, 1867. The missing comet was next due at perihelion in the year 1872, and the probability was contemplated by both Weiss and Galle of its being replaced by a copious discharge of falling stars.
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