HEAVENLY VISITANTS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5127, 18 May 1927, Page 4

HEAVENLY VISITANTS.

NEAR APPROACH OF COMETS.

TWO IN VIEW NEXT MONTH.

Two astronomical records will be broken in June. Two comets will be within 20,000,000 miles of the earth for the first time in the history of the stars, and one of them will be nearer the earth than any comet has been before.

Astronomers are already searching the skies for Grigg-Skjellerup, the comet without a tail, whose reappealance is expected nightly. It may be visible with the naked eye as early as May 10 when it will be nearest the sun, and only 17,000,000 miles—an insignificant distance in astronomical space—from the earth. It will be easily distinguishable with the telescope as a luminous centre surrounded by a misty halo. All authenticated astronomical records will be beaten by Pons-Win-necke, the comet with a tall 1,000,000 miles long, that will be a mere 4,000,000 milse from the earth during June.

Pons-Winnecke is the comet that created a stir by appearing six months later than the astronomers predicted. It used to appear punctually at intervals of five and a half years until the planet Jupiter interfered with its orbit. It reappears now at intervals of six years, and it will continue to do so until Jupiter interferes again.

The comet will overtake and pass the earth at the speed of five miles a second, on an uncertain date in June, and it will be a striking object when viewed through a telescope on fine June evenings.

“Alarmist rumours are always spread when a comet is approaching,” Dr. A. C. D. Crommelin, the eminent astronomer, said to a Daily Express representative. “American astronomers have annpounced that the earth will pass through Pons-Wi.n-necke’s tail, in spite of the fact that the tail will point In another direction.

“There are always people prepared to believe that the gases of the comet’s tail would wipe out all life on earth. There was a false alarm when Pons-Winnecke appeared last in 1921, and we passed right through the tail of Halley’s comet in 1910 without any one feling the worse for it.”