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The comet reached minimum elongation on 13 March, on 25°. [4] It reached its peak brightness in April. Jacobson spotted the comet with naked eye on April 18. David H. Levy reported that the comet had an apparent magnitude of 4.7 with the naked eye on April 24. In the end of April the tail of the comet was reported to be up to 2–3 degrees long.
In some cases, the pages of the document roll out to be five feet long. Each comet's picture has a caption which describes an event its appearance corresponded to, such as "the death of the prince", "the coming of the plague", or "the three-year drought." One of the comets in the manuscript has four tails and resembles a swastika.
A thick accumulation of dust layers might be a good description of all of the short period comets, as dust layers with thicknesses on the order of meters are thought to have accumulated on the surfaces of short-period comet nuclei. The accumulation of dust layers over time would change the physical character of the short-period comet.
Astronomers observe astronomical objects, such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either observational (by analyzing the data) or theoretical astronomy. Examples of topics or fields astronomers study include planetary science, solar astronomy, the origin or evolution of stars, or the formation of galaxies.
The comet was rapidly approaching perihelion when it was first seen. At perihelion, the comet is estimated to have been only 300,000 miles or 480,000 kilometres (0.0032 AU) from the Sun's surface. [9] Subsequent orbital studies have determined that it was a sungrazing comet, one which passes extremely close to the surface of the Sun. For many ...
Soon after the first orbital elements could be calculated, it was suggested that the comet would become "a bright object, that could be observed with unaided eye."It was found to combine three favorable characteristics that made it an exceptional comet for observation: a short perihelion distance, a short distance from Earth, and high intrinsic brightness. [9]
VLBI observations of maser sources in late type stars and star forming regions provide determinations of their trigonometric parallax and therefore their distance. This method is much more accurate than other distance determinations, and gives us information about the galactic distance scale, e.g. the distance of spiral arms.
[1] [6] More intentional visits to comets appear in Arthur C. Clarke's 1960 short story "Into the Comet", where humans exploring a comet end up stranded there as a result of a technological malfunction; [3] [6] Hal Clement's 1960 short story "Sunspot", where a comet is repurposed as a space station for studying the Sun at close range; [2] [3 ...