Who discovered Halley's Comet?
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Ultimately, it was Newton's friend, editor and publisher, Edmond Halley, who, in his 1705 "Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets", used Newton's new laws to calculate the gravitational effects of Jupiter and Saturn on cometary orbits. Having compiled a list of 24 comet observations, he calculated that the orbital elements of a second comet that had appeared in 1682 were nearly the same as those of two comets that had appeared in 1531 (observed by Petrus Apianus) and 1607 (observed by Johannes Kepler). Halley thus concluded that all three comets were, in fact, the same object returning about every 76 years, a period that has since been found to vary between 74–79 years. After a rough estimate of the perturbations the comet would sustain from the gravitational attraction of the planets, he predicted its return for 1758. While he had personally observed the comet around perihelion in September 1682, Halley died in 1742 before he could observe its predicted return.
Halley's Comet
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The names given to comets have followed several different conventions over the past two centuries. Before any systematic naming convention was adopted, comets were named in a variety of ways. The first one to be named was "Halley's Comet" (now officially known as Comet Halley), named after Edmond Halley, who had calculated its orbit. Similarly, the second known periodic comet, Comet Encke (formally designated 2P/Encke), was named after the astronomer, Johann Franz Encke, who had calculated its orbit rather than the original discoverer of the comet, Pierre Méchain. Other comets that bore the possessive include "Biela's Comet" (3D/Biela) and "Miss Herschel's Comet" (35P/Herschel–Rigollet, or Comet Herschel–Rigollet). Most bright (non-periodic) comets were referred to as 'The Great Comet Of...' the year in which they appeared.
Astronomical naming conventions
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Halley's returns to the inner Solar System have been observed and recorded by astronomers since at least 240 BC. Clear records of the comet's appearances were made by Chinese, Babylonian, and medieval European chroniclers, but were not recognized as reappearances of the same object at the time. The comet's periodicity was first determined in 1705 by English astronomer Edmond Halley, after whom it is now named.
Halley's Comet
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The orbits of the Halley-type comets suggest that they were originally long-period comets whose orbits were perturbed by the gravity of the giant planets and directed into the inner Solar System. If Halley was once a long-period comet, it is likely to have originated in the Oort cloud, a sphere of cometary bodies that has an inner edge of 20,000–50,000 AU. Conversely the Jupiter-family comets are generally believed to originate in the Kuiper belt, a flat disc of icy debris between 30 AU (Neptune's orbit) and 50 AU from the Sun (in the scattered disc). Another point of origin for the Halley-type comets was proposed in 2008, when a trans-Neptunian object with a retrograde orbit similar to Halley's was discovered, , whose orbit takes it from just outside that of Uranus to twice the distance of Pluto. It may be a member of a new population of small Solar System bodies that serves as the source of Halley-type comets.
Halley's Comet
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Wolf started his career as a comet hunter and continued to discover them throughout his life. He discovered or co-discovered several comets, including 14P/Wolf and 43P/Wolf-Harrington. Wolf won a competition with E. E. Barnard on who would be the first to observe the return of Halley's Comet (P1/Halley) in April 1910.
Max Wolf
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As its official designation implies, Encke's Comet was the first periodic comet discovered after Halley's Comet (designated 1P/Halley). It was independently observed by several astronomers, the second being Caroline Herschel in 1795 and the third Jean-Louis Pons in 1818. Its orbit was calculated by Johann Franz Encke, who through laborious calculations was able to link observations of comets in 1786 (designated 2P/1786 B1), 1795 (2P/1795 V1), 1805 (2P/1805 U1) and 1818 (2P/1818 W1) to the same object. In 1819 he published his conclusions in the journal "Correspondance astronomique", and predicted correctly its return in 1822 (2P/1822 L1). It was recovered by Carl Ludwig Christian Rümker at Parramatta Observatory on 2 June 1822.
Comet Encke
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He also developed a method of eliminating systematic errors in positioning brighter comets that resulted in a more accurate prediction of the Halley's Comet. A recalculation of the path of Halley's comet to 2317 BC confirmed that the Greeks had already seen the comet on 466 B.C.
He discovered seven minor planets including 3683 Baumann, 4378 Voigt (named after Hans-Heinrich Voigt), 9938 Kretlow and 4349 Tibúrcio at ESO's La Silla Observatory in northern Chile.
Werner Landgraf
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Following a suggestion by Jean-Louis Pons, who suspected one of the three comets discovered in 1818 to be the same one already discovered by him in 1805, Encke began to calculate the orbital elements of this comet. At this time, all the known comets had an orbital period of seventy years and more, with an aphelion far beyond the orbit of Uranus. The most famous comet of this family was Comet Halley with its period of seventy-six years. So the orbit of the comet discovered by Pons was a sensation, because his orbit was found to have a period of 3.3 years, so that the aphelion had to be within the orbit of Jupiter. Encke predicted its return for 1822, but this return was observable only from the southern hemisphere and was seen by Carl Ludwig Christian Rümker in Australia. The comet was also identified with the one seen by Pierre Méchain in 1786 and by Caroline Herschel in 1795.
Johann Franz Encke
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Among the comets with short enough periods to have been observed several times in the historical record, Halley's Comet is unique in that it is consistently bright enough to be visible to the naked eye while passing through the inner Solar System. Since the confirmation of the periodicity of Halley's Comet, other [periodic comet]]s have been discovered through the use of the telescope. The second comet found to have a periodic orbit was Encke's Comet (with the official designation of 2P/Encke). During the period 1819–21 the German mathematician and physicist Johann Franz Encke computed the orbits for a series of comets that had been observed in 1786, 1795, 1805, and 1818, and he concluded that they were same comet, and successfully predicted its return in 1822. By 1900, seventeen comets had been observed through more than one passage through their perihelions, and then recognized as being periodic comets. , 305 comets have achieved this distinction, although several of these have disintegrated or been lost.
Observational history of comets
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Halley's Comet, named after English astronomer Edmund Halley who first demonstrated its periodicity, returns to the vicinity of the Sun and Earth approximately every 76 years. Since comets are believed to be the most primordial objects in the solar system, their study is of great importance to planetary science. At the time of the 1986 return (technically, "apparition") of the comet, astronomical telescopes and related instrumentation were vastly more sensitive than for any previous apparition. Consequently, the International Halley Watch (IHW) was organized to stimulate, standardize, collect, and archive observations of the comet.
International Halley Watch
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The following is a list of Halley-type comets (HTCs), which are periodic comets with an orbital period between 20 and 200 years, often appearing only once or twice within one's lifetime. The majority come from between the orbits of Saturn and Neptune; Due to the nature of their orbits, their orbits can be perturbed by the giant planets and sent into orbits too far from the Sun to outgas, and vice versa. Minor planets in comet-like orbits similar to HTCs that never come close enough to the Sun to outgas are called centaurs. HTCs are named after the first discovered member, and the first discovered periodic comet, Halley's Comet, which orbits the Sun in about 75 years, and passing as far as the orbit of Neptune.
List of Halley-type comets