Page:The story of the comets.djvu/205

X. a string of beads'. At intervals I thought there was another point of light between b and c, but as I could not absolutely satisfy myself of its objective existence, I have only represented the four portions, of the presence of which I entertained no doubt whatever. Both Mr. Symons and myself particularly noticed the frequent flickering of the light of the nucleus, which was quite apparent both to the naked eye and in the telescope."

J. F. J. Schmidt published a sketch of the nucleus which is not unlike Prince's; and having seen Prince's he refers to it as a good representation of what he had seen himself. He noticed a vibratory motion in the fan.

The suggestion that the comet's tail was tubular in form is due to Tempel, who brought out the idea in some striking sketches which he sent to the Royal Astronomical Society, accompanied, for the sake of comparison, by a drawing of the appearance of 2 hollow glass cylinders as seen in the focus of an eyepiece.

The peculiar shape of the extremity of the tail will be sufficiently indicated by the accompanying woodcut of a drawing by B. J. Hopkins. [Fig. 84.] His simile was that the general form of the tail resembled the Greek letter γ.

The peculiar shape of the tip of this comet's tail was mentioned by most observers. This feature, though rare as regards the comets of the last half century, may be conceived to be the shape meant by old writers when they speak (as they often do) of having seen a comet resembling in form "a Turkish scymitar".

The most noteworthy physical peculiarity of the Comet of 1882 was its throwing off a mass of matter which became a satellite comet, as recorded by Schmidt at Athens, and by Barnard and Brooks in America. Perhaps it is going too far to speak quite as definitely as this, but the fact is clear that Schmidt saw on Oct. 9, and on two or three later days, a nebulous mass in the neighbourhood of the comet which calculation indicated to be cometary matter moving round the Sun in an orbit considerably resembling the orbit of the comet. Brooks's observation made on Oct. 21 was that he saw a nebulous mass on the opposite side of the comet to