HALLEY'S COMET.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3183, 7 May 1909, Page 3

HALLEY'S COMET.

Disquieting rumours are afloat among astronomers as to the approaching visit Ox Halley's comet. Early in the year the great telescopes of the world were dilligently made ready to welcome back "this great Sy?h Heilm of the skies/ 1 as acme enthusiast calls it, anu Di - . Wolf, of Heidelberg, found a tiny speck on one of his photographic plates that might have been the comet, but he could not be sure. Meanwhile the mathematicians are agreeing that the visitor will be badly placed for observation in the northern hemisphere when he does make his appearance. Tasmania and South Africa will see him at his best at the time of: greatest brightness some months but some astronomers suggest that this particular comet has singed his wings too often at the sun and is growing feebler. When near the sun a great stream of matter leaves a comst with a velocity of 80,000 miles an hour, and this must constitute a huge drain on its system. One great dipsapointment likely to be experienced it' the comet keeps to its calculated t:me-table is that when it wll be only some 34,000,000 miles from Tasmania a total eclipse of the sun will occur there, but the will set 20 minutes before totality. Some apprehension has Deen expressed lest at this close approach the poisonous cyanogen gas in his tail,should mingle with our atmosphere. But the cornet will be at its descending node on May 16, and the earth will cross the comst's orbit two days and a-half later. This node will be about 13,000,000 miles from the earth. It is therefore calculated that if matter was being ejected from the comet at 216,000 miles an hour it would just hit the earth. It is not likely to hay? anything like that velocity. The Morehouse comet of last year ejected matter with a speed of about 70,000 miles an hour. Halley's comet i 3 the first whose return was ever predicted. Newton had shown how to calculate a comet'a titbit, and Hailed 'using Newton's method computed the path of no fewer tllan 24» fie noticed that three of them, Visible at intervals of about 75. years had practically the same orbit, and he therefore concluded that these were successive appearances of the same object. The } present is its third since } Halley's day.