Page:The story of the comets.djvu/155

IX. sufficiently bright to attract general notice till the end of the month. A tail was first seen on Sept. 24, and during October the comet was more or less conspicuous, but observers differed very much in their estimates of the maximum length of the tail. The average of the estimates would seem to have been from 20° to 25°, though one observer did put it at 30°. The comet was lost to view about the time of perihelion passage disappearing below the S. W. horizon, and having, according to most accounts, lost its tail before the comet itself was lost to view. After the perihelion passage the comet was again observed at some of the southern observatories of Europe and at the Cape of Good Hope from Dec. 30 to the middle of May 1836.

Smyth's observations deserve to be quoted. Under the dates of Oct. 10 and 11 he wrote:—

"Oct. 10. The Comet in this evening's examination presented an extraordinary phenomenon. The brush, fan, or gleam of light, before mentioned, was clearly perceptible issuing from the nucleus, which was now about 17" in diameter and shooting into the coma; the glances at times being very strong, and of a different aspect from the other parts of the luminosity. On viewing this appearance it was impossible not to recall the strange drawing of the 'luminous sector' which is given by Hevelius in his Annus Climactericus as the representation of Halley's Comet in 1682 and which had been considered as a distortion. [See Fig. 41, ante.]

"Oct. 11. . . . The tail was increasing in length and brightness, and, what was most remarkable, in the opposite direction to it there proceeded from the coma across the nucleus a luminous band or lucid sector more than 60" or 70" in length and about 25" broad, with 2 obtuse-angled rays, the nucleus being its central point. The light of this singular object was more brilliant than the other parts of the nebulosity, and considerably more so than the tail; it was therefore amazingly distinct. On applying as much magnifying power as it would bear, the nucleus appeared to be rather gibbous than perfectly round: but with the strange sector impinging it was a question of difficulty."

The observations made at the Cape of Good Hope by Maclear disclose a succession of phenomena somewhat calculated to chill the enthusiasm of any who may be expecting great things of Halley's Comet in 1910. However, that is no reason for suppressing the observations. Though the perihelion passage took place on Nov. 15, 1835, Maclear did not begin to see the comet, or at any rate to record what he saw,