Page:Newton's Principia (1846).djvu/496

 that the force of gravity is reciprocally as the square of the distance from the centre of the earth) raising a calculus, by Cor. Prop. XXII, Book II, I found, that, at the height of one semi-diameter of the earth, reckoned from the earth's surface, the air is more rare than with us in a far greater proportion than of the whole space within the orb of Saturn to a spherical space of one inch in diameter; and therefore if a sphere of our air of but one inch in thickness was equally rarefied with the air at the height of one semi-diameter of the earth from the earth's surface, it would fill all the regions of the planets to the orb of Saturn, and far beyond it. Wherefore since the air at greater distances is immensely rarefied, and the coma or atmosphere of comets is ordinarily about ten times higher, reckoning from their centres, than the surface of the nucleus, and the tails rise yet higher, they must therefore be exceedingly rare; and though, on account of the much thicker atmospheres of comets, and the great gravitation of their bodies towards the sun, as well as of the particles of their air and vapours mutually one towards another, it may happen that the air in the celestial spaces and in the tails of comets is not so vastly rarefied, yet from this computation it is plain that a very small quantity of air and vapour is abundantly sufficient to produce all the appearances of the tails of comets; for that they are, indeed, of a very notable rarity appears from the shining of the stars through them. The atmosphere of the earth, illuminated by the sun's light, though but of a few miles in thickness, quite obscures and extinguishes the light not only of all the stars, but even of the moon itself; whereas the smallest stars are seen to shine through the immense thickness of the tails of comets, likewise illuminated by the sun, without the least diminution of their splendor. Nor is the brightness of the tails of most comets ordinarily greater than that of our air, an inch or two in thickness, reflecting in a darkened room the light of the sun-beams let in by a hole of the window-shutter.

And we may pretty nearly determine the time spent during the ascent of the vapour from the comet's head to the extremity of the tail, by drawing a right line from the extremity of the tail to the sun, and marking the place where that right line intersects the comet's orbit: for the vapour that is now in the extremity of the tail, if it has ascended in a right line from the sun, must have begun to rise from the head at the time when the head was in the point of intersection. It is true, the vapour does not rise in a right line from the sun, but, retaining the motion which it had from the comet before its ascent, and compounding that motion with its motion of ascent, arises obliquely; and, therefore, the solution of the Problem will be more exact, if we draw the line which intersects the orbit parallel to the length of the tail; or rather (because of the curvilinear motion of the comet) diverging a little from the line or length of the tail. And by means of this principle I found that the vapour which, January 25, was