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The comet was fading in May. Closest approach to Earth took place on May 12, 1988, at a distance on 1.22 AU. By the end of May its magnitude was reported to be 7-7.4. [4] By July the comet was very faint and diffuse. It was last observed on 12 August 1988, when it had an apparent magnitude of 12 and its coma was 1.3–1.4 arcminutes across. [4]
De systemate orbis cometici, deque admirandis coeli characteribus (transl.Of the systematics of the world of comets, and on the admirable objects of the sky) is a small tract on comets and other celestial objects by the Sicilian astronomer Giovanni Battista Hodierna published in 1654. [1]
The word comet derives from the Old English cometa from the Latin comēta or comētēs. That, in turn, is a romanization of the Greek κομήτης 'wearing long hair', and the Oxford English Dictionary notes that the term (ἀστὴρ) κομήτης already meant 'long-haired star, comet' in Greek.
The presence of the comet was also confirmed by professional astronomers on 24 July, who estimated its magnitude to be between 3 and 3.4. [3] On 25 July, Alan McClure photographed the comet and noted it had a tail 21 degrees long and an antitail about 3.3° long, while visually the tail extended for 23 degrees and the anti-tail for 1.5 degrees.
Little is known of what people thought about comets before Aristotle, who observed his eponymous comet, and most of what is known comes secondhand.From cuneiform astronomical tablets, and works by Aristotle, Diodorus Siculus, Seneca, and one attributed to Plutarch but now thought to be Aetius, it is observed that ancient philosophers divided themselves into two main camps.
Comet LINEAR, formal designation C/2012 X1, is a non-periodic comet that was observed telescopically from 2012 to 2015. It produced a powerful outburst on 21 October 2013, which raised its brightness 100 times its expected magnitude from 12 to 8.5 for several months.
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Examples of astronomical objects include planetary systems, star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies, while asteroids, moons, planets, and stars are astronomical bodies. A comet may be identified as both a body and an object: It is a body when referring to the frozen nucleus of ice and dust, and an object when describing the entire comet with its ...