DAYLIGHT COMET.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9996, 17 March 1910, Page 7

DAYLIGHT COMET.

| DASHING THROUGH SPALE AT A MILLION MILES AN HOUR. TAIL NINE MILLION MILES LONG. The first photographs of the new daylight comet were obtained on Saturday last by British astronomers, reports the "London Daily Mail" of January 29th. Dr Whittaker, Royal Astronomer for Ireland, telegraphs from Dublin:

The comet was successfully photographed at Dunsink Oaservatcry on Saturday. A horn was ofcneived on the side of the fiead opposite the tail.

Dr Turner, Savilian Professcr of | Astronomy at Oxford University, 1 telegraphs:— Qn Saturday two photographs were obtained, showing the brighter portion of the tail. TWO TAILS. Sir Robert Ball and the other astronomers at Cambridge Observatory had a beautiful evening for their observations; In a cloudless sky, after a lovely sunset, the comet was seen in the afterglow between Venus and the horizon—a glorious spectacle, clearly visible to the nnked eye once it had been located. Its enormous tail, which Sir Robert Ball estimated at at least three degrees in length, expanded and contracted, glowed, and then became fainter, but fhe nucleus was always bright, and gleamed like nearly white-hot metal. Seen through an astron> rriical telescope, the nuclaus or body of the comet shows a dullish red, save at the point nearest to tht sjij, which is bright. There are really two tails curving like horns or the extended large claws of a• crab. On Monday the weather was generally too hazy for suecessful observations to be madi. The new comet was agaii seen cn Tuesday by numerous observers, the clear sky being particularly favourable to a good view. According to observations at Cambridge, it had markedly faded, and at times it almost disappeared from view. Another change is an appar.nt alteration in its course, which Bir Robert Ball and the Cambridge Observatory staff | "are carefully following. The tail is estimated to be nine million miles in length.

SPEED OF THE COMET. On Wednesday we received the ful- , lowing reports from observatories: — j The comet was observed this even- ' ing for a few minutes. The position i found at 5 33 p.m. was: Right ascen- j sion, 21hi6 20mins 39secs, north declination 2deg 9.drains. The diameter j of the nucleus was about 50 seconds j of arc. It was moving in a north • • easterly direction, its right ascension j increasing about 5 minutes, and north delcination about Z.2deg daily. —F. W. Dyson, Astronomer Royal of Scotland, Edinburgh. lhe new comet has surpassed itself this evening, lor it was not so much interfered with by twilight on one eide and moonlight on the other. , The tail to-night was about 16deg long—that is, about half as long again as on Tuesday night. A beautiful view of it is obtained through a binocular. - Robert Ball, Lowndean Professor of Asti'onomy, Cambridge. At a thronged meeting of the British Astronomial Association on Wednesday, Mr A. C. D. Crommelin, assistant at Greenwich Observatory, spoke of the daylight comet. He said that it had sped from the northern sky towards the sun quite unseen from the earth until it had swept round the sun. Mr Crommelin reckons that it is some eighty million miles from the earth. A3 to the speed of the comet's rush through the sky, it might, said Mr Crommelin, be as high as one million miles an hour.