Flying Visitor Came Billions of Miles

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 220, 6 December 1927, Page 11

Flying Visitor Came Billions of Miles

THE COMET’S JOURNEY ORIGIN OF THE BODIES Having travelled for billions of miles to visit otir solar system, the unexpected comet, now appearing" in the Southern sky, will career round tlie sun and then leave us for ever. It does not belong to our family of the sun and planets, but has been hurled off from some other system an inestimable distance away. This is the opinion of Mr. F. R. Hi eld, an astronomer and mathematician, who observed the comet last night. Though it is travelling at a terrific speed as it nears the sun, it has probably been going at a leisurely rate previously. Mr. Field estimated that Halley’s comet, which is really a part of our own solar system, wa str a veiling at some millions of miles an hour when it appeared in 1910, but that 27 years later it woul dbe moving at a fast walking pace, or six miles an hour. WHAT IT MAY DO The present comet will shoot toward the sun, double round and career off again, its speed beginning to slacken again until it enters some other system. There are three paths it may take. If it is on the other side of the sun it will pass between the earth and the sun on its return journey, and consequently appear much larger to us. It may turn round the earth, and then it would appear in the northern sky; or again it may already be between the sun and the earth, in which event it will get much smaller as it shoots away. “A comet is a very insignificant thing,” said Mr. Field. “If it was actually brought into a condensed atmosphere of the earth it would shrink to such dimensions that it could be placed in a hat.” Last evening the comet was visible in the southern sky about 10 degrees away from the Triangle, and near the Southern Cross. To the naked eye, its tail stretches for about one degree, and is no awe-inspiring sight, like Halley’s comet. No matter which way a comet is going, its tail always points away from the sun. JUST METEORITES

“Comets are apparently nothing more or less than meteorites, with extremely elongated orbits, which travel at terrific speed when near the sun,” said Mr. Field. “The tail is produced by the heat created and the gases given off through the small body travelling at such immense speed through an atmosphere which, though extremely attenuated toward the outskirts of the solar system, has an appreciable density near the sun.” “A curious thing is that the comet not only loses matter, but in passing through the atmosphere actually collects matter. A photograph of a bullet in flight shows just what happens. The comet head, or nucleus, collects a cushion of compressed atmosphere, and this becomes incorporated in the nucleus. The origin of comets and meteorites is the premature condensation of and dispersion of a vaporous stream which has been cast off from a central nebula and which, undisturbed, would have developed into a more considerable member of a solar system.”

“GOLDEN-COPPERY COLOUR” Press Association BLENHEIM, To-day. The new comet was plainly visible to the naked eye in the south-western sky from 9 o’clock last evening until 12.45 a.m. this morning, when it disappeared behind the western hills. When first observed the comet had a long, curving tail, but later the curve vanished and the comet presented the appearance of a bright star with a long, straight tail. It gained in brightness and at midnight the head was of a golden coppery colour.