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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.
French astronomer Alphonse Borrelly was the first person to discover the comet on the early morning of 24 July 1900, while William Robert Brooks independently spotted the same comet about 15 minutes later. [4] They reported the comet as a 9th-magnitude object with a short tail located within the constellation Aries.
Comets whose aphelia are near a major planet's orbit are called its "family". [81] Such families are thought to arise from the planet capturing formerly long-period comets into shorter orbits. [82] At the shorter orbital period extreme, Encke's Comet has an orbit that does not reach the orbit of Jupiter, and is known as an Encke-type comet.
A minor outburst took place on 6 February, which was also observed in infrared. The comet was last observed on 4 May 1970. [6] C/1969 T1 was the very first comet observed by Alan Hale (who later became the co-discoverer of Comet Hale-Bopp), at the time the comet faded as a 5th-magnitude object on February 2, 1970. [8]
The comet rapidly brightened as it slowly approached the Earth, and was closest at 0.757 AU (113.2 million km) on 2 August 1907. [4] Edward E. Barnard made a series of photographic observations of the comet between 11 July and 8 September 1907, where he described the comet being visible to the naked eye for two months. [ 5 ]
Herapath's Comet, [7] also known as C/1831 A1 by its modern designation, is a bright comet that was visible in the naked eye in 1831. Due to its brightness, it is considered to be the Great Comet of 1831 .
Comet Brooks–Swift, also known as C/1883 D1 by its modern nomenclature, is a hyperbolic comet that was visible telescopically to Earth in the early months of 1883. It was discovered independently by two American astronomers, William Robert Brooks and Lewis A. Swift .
The comet reached its maximum solar elongation of 43° on 4 May. At that day the magnitude was given to be between 5.6 and 6.5. On 7 May the comet had a photographic magnitude of 6, a coma about 3 arcminutes across and its tail was extending for 2.7 degrees. By May 20 the comet had faded to magnitude 7.5–7.8.