The Comet.

Thames Star, Volume XIV, Issue 4400, 9 February 1883, Page 2

The Comet.

According to M. Schmidf, an Athens observer, the great fCpmet-of, 1882: birth to a daughter. One morning (sayf* '* the Londori correspondent of the MeU bourne Telegraph) a little comet was observed running alongside the big- one--* the mother. The little stranger had" Keen produced by segmentation. The two stars had the appearance of marching , together", but the mother had changed in ~ form; the nucleus from being spherical had becoma elongited. It is not the first occasion on which our world has witnessed the birth of. a star; The Biela comet, in 1846, split into two. Discovered in 1826 by BielaV it returned later in six years and nine months, » v as was accurately predicted. • On the 13th January, 1842, it opened in two, lengthways, and that, evening the twins travelled in beauty, side by side, two complete comets, with independent heads and tails. A few days later they separated, and by the 10th February they were already 180,000 miles asunder. One lo3t;its tail rapidly and also its,brilliancy; f *f by March both were invisible. In 1852, after a punctual revolution of six years and nine months, they reappeared, but distant 1,500,000 miles from each other. Since, nothing has been heard of either... However, it is suspected that the shower of falling stars that so singularly marked the year 1872 were the > debris of the Biela comets. According to Schioparelli, a swarm of shooting stars follow in space, .*■' orbits identically with comets, and are simply comets reduced to morsels by disintegration.