HALLEY’S COMET.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 843, 24 May 1910, Page 2

HALLEY’S COMET.

Halley’s comet can be seen every evening in the western sky, although the bright moonlight mars the brilliancy of the tail. Professor Birkland, observing the comet at Finmark, Canada, suggests that the tail is principally electric rays. Mr Stevenson, F.R.A.S., of Auckland, describes the comet’s motion as marvellously rapid. He says we have never before seen such rapid motion by any heavenly body, not excepting the moon on its orbit.

[To the Editor.] Sir, —No wouder so many looked in vain for the transit of the comet’s nucleus on Thursday afternoon. Someone has blundered. When it was first announced that the transit would begin at 1.52 p.m., I accepted the time as fairly correct, but finding that exactly the same prediction appeared to be made by so many different computers I became sceptical, and, when too late, tried in vain to get observations for checking the time. A transit of Mercury or Venus can be calculated to a nicety, but in the case of a comet one would expect a dozen calculations to give as many results, with a fairly wide range of difference in the times arrived at. Another thing that aroused my suspicions was the very general, but unwarrantable, assertion that we should pass completely through the comet’s tail on Thursday night. It looked as though one man had made faulty calculations, and everybody else had accepted them without question. That the tail did not pass us on Thursday night w is very evident, Irom the fact that it was still a brilliant object in the eastern sky on Friday morning. This morning it was again seen there, spread out to a width of some twelve degrees, with three rays, one central and two marginal. There can now be no doubt that the densest portion of the tail is passing us to-day and to-morrow (the 21st and 22nd), and, as for the time of the nucleus’ transit, a message is now cabled from Berlin that the latest calculations gave the time for the commencement of the transit as 4.22 a.m., of the 19th. Whether this is Berlin or Greenwich time is not staled. If the former, it means that we might have expected the transit to start at 2.58 p.m. on Thursday; if the latter (which is more probable), it would be equivalent to 3.52 p.m. on Thursday. In either case it would indicate that the transit did not begin until after people within the 195 kdegrees, of longitude exposed to the sun during the time of transit had given up looking for it. At Wanganui, the increasing clouds obscured the sun shortly after 3 p.m., |but it is to be hoped that some persevering observers ia-y other parts were able to watch the sun till it set. Personally, I attach more importance to observations taken to-day and to-morrow- As yet nothing obviously extraordinary seems to have been noted.—l am, etc., Fredk. R. Field. Aramoho, 21st May, 1910.