Astronomy with an opera-glass by Garrett Putman Serviss

Author:Garrett Putman Serviss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: D. Appleton and company

The star Nu, which serves as a pointer to the Great Nebula, is itself worth some attention with a pretty strong glass on account of a pair of small stars near it.

The star Gamma (7) is interesting, not only as one of the most beautiful triples in the heavens (an opera-glass is far too feeble an instrument to reveal its companions), but because it serves to indicate the radiant point of the Biela meteors. There was once a comet well known to astronomers by the name of its discoverer, Biela. It repeated its visits to the neighborhood of the sun once in every six or seven years. In 1846 this comet astonished all observers by splitting into two comets, which continued to run side by side, like two equal racers, in their course around the sun. Each developed a tail of its own. In 1852, when the twin comets were due again, the astronomical world was on the qui vive, and they did not disappoint expectation, for back they came out of the depths of space, still racing, but much farther apart than they had been before, alternating in brightness as if the long struggle had nearly exhausted them, and finally, like spent runners, growing faint and disappearing. They have never been seen since.

In 1872, when the comets should have been visible, if they still existed, a very startling thing happened. Out of the northern heavens, along the track of the missing comets, where the earth crossed it, on the night of the 27th of November came glistening and dashing the fiery spray of a storm of meteors. It was the dust and fragments of the lost comet of Biela, which, after being split in two in 1852,- had evidently continued the process of disintegration until its cometary character was completely lost. It seems to have made a truly ghostly exit, for right after the meteor swarm of 1872 a mysterious cometary body was seen, which was supposed at the time to be the missing comet itself, and which, it is not altogether improbable, may have been a fragment of it. Three days after the meteors burst over Europe, it occurred to Professor Klinkerfues, of Berlin, that if they came from Biela's comet the comet itself ought to be seen in the southern hemisphere retreating from its encounter with the earth. On November 30th he sent his now historical telegram to Mr. Pogson, an astronomer at Madras; "Biela touched earth November 27th. Search near Theta Centauri." For thirty-six hours after the receipt of this extraordinary request Mr. Pogson was prevented by clouds from scanning the heavens with his telescope. When the sky cleared at last, behold there was a comet in the place indicated in the telegram! It was glimpsed again the next night, and then clouds intervened, and not a trace of it was ever seen afterward.

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