When was Halley's Comet first discovered?
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Halley's periodic returns have been subject to scientific investigation since the 16th century. The three apparitions from 1531 to 1682 were noted by Edmond Halley, enabling him to predict its 1759 return. Streams of vapour observed during the comet's 1835 apparition prompted astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel to propose that the jet forces of evaporating material could be great enough to significantly alter a comet's orbit.
The 1910 approach, which came into naked-eye view around 10 April and came to perihelion on 20 April, was notable for several reasons: it was the first approach of which photographs exist, and the first for which spectroscopic data were obtained. Furthermore, the comet made a relatively close approach of 0.15 AU, making it a spectacular sight. Indeed, on 19 May, Earth actually passed through the tail of the comet. One of the substances discovered in the tail by spectroscopic analysis was the toxic gas cyanogen, which led astronomer Camille Flammarion to claim that, when Earth passed through the tail, the gas "would impregnate the atmosphere and possibly snuff out all life on the planet." His pronouncement led to panicked buying of gas masks and quack "anti-comet pills" and "anti-comet umbrellas" by the public. In reality, as other astronomers were quick to point out, the gas is so diffuse that the world suffered no ill effects from the passage through the tail.
Halley's Comet
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Halley at first agreed with the longtime consensus that each comet was a different entity making a single visit to the solar system. In 1705, he applied Newton's method to 23 cometary apparitions that had occurred between 1337 and 1698. Halley noted that three of these, the comets of 1531, 1607, and 1682, had very similar orbital elements, and he was further able to account for the slight differences in their orbits in terms of gravitational perturbation by Jupiter and Saturn. Confident that these three apparitions had been three appearances of the same comet, he predicted that it would appear again in 1758–9. (Earlier, Robert Hooke had identified the comet of 1664 with that of 1618, while Giovanni Domenico Cassini had suspected the identity of the comets of 1577, 1665, and 1680. Both were incorrect.) Halley's predicted return date was later refined by a team of three French mathematicians: Alexis Clairaut, Joseph Lalande, and Nicole-Reine Lepaute, who predicted the date of the comet's 1759 perihelion to within one month's accuracy. Halley died before the comet's return; when it returned as predicted, it became known as Halley's Comet (with the latter-day designation of 1P/Halley). The comet next appears in 2061.
Observational history of comets
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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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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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Halley's 1986 apparition was the least favourable on record. The comet and Earth were on opposite sides of the Sun in February 1986, creating the worst viewing circumstances for Earth observers for the last 2,000 years. Halley's closest approach was 0.42 AU. Additionally, with increased light pollution from urbanization, many people failed to even see the comet. It was possible to observe it in areas outside of cities with the help of binoculars. Further, the comet appeared brightest when it was almost invisible from the northern hemisphere in March and April. Halley's approach was first detected by astronomers David Jewitt and G. Edward Danielson on 16 October 1982 using the 5.1 m Hale telescope at Mount Palomar and a CCD camera. The first person to visually observe the comet on its 1986 return was amateur astronomer Stephen James O'Meara on 24 January 1985. O'Meara used a home-built 24-inch telescope on top of Mauna Kea to detect the magnitude 19.6 comet. On 8 November 1985, Stephen Edberg (then serving as the Coordinator for Amateur Observations at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and Charles Morris were the first to observe Halley's Comet with the naked eye in its 1986 apparition.
Halley's Comet
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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
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Meteor showers first designated "shooting stars" were connected to comets in the 1800s. E.C. Herrick made an observation in 1839 and 1840 about the activity present in the October night skies. A. S. Herschel produced the first documented record that gave accurate forecasts for the next meteor shower. The Orionid meteor shower is produced by the well known Halley's Comet, which was named after the astronomer Edmund Halley and last passed through the inner solar system in 1986 on its 75- to 76-year orbit. When the comet passes through the solar system, the sun sublimates some of the ice, allowing rock particles to break away from the comet. These particles continue on the comet's trajectory and appear as meteors ("falling stars") when they pass through Earth's upper atmosphere. Halley's comet is also responsible for creating the Eta Aquariids, which occur each May.
Orionids
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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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During its 1986 apparition, Halley's Comet became the first comet to be observed in detail by spacecraft, providing the first observational data on the structure of a comet nucleus and the mechanism of coma and tail formation. These observations supported a number of longstanding hypotheses about comet construction, particularly Fred Whipple's "dirty snowball" model, which correctly predicted that Halley would be composed of a mixture of volatile ices—such as water, carbon dioxide, and ammonia—and dust. The missions also provided data that substantially reformed and reconfigured these ideas; for instance, it is now understood that the surface of Halley is largely composed of dusty, non-volatile materials, and that only a small portion of it is icy.
Halley's Comet
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On 12 February 1991, at a distance of from the Sun, Halley displayed an outburst that lasted for several months, releasing a cloud of dust 300,000 km across. The outburst likely started in December 1990, and then the comet brightened from magnitude 24.3 to magnitude 18.9. Halley was most recently observed in 2003 by three of the Very Large Telescopes at Paranal, Chile, when Halley's magnitude was 28.2. The telescopes observed Halley, at the faintest and farthest any comet has ever been imaged, in order to verify a method for finding very faint trans-Neptunian objects. Astronomers are now able to observe the comet at any point in its orbit.
Halley's Comet