Abstract
THE DIVISION OF BIELA'S COMET.—Those who have made themselves acquainted with Hubbard's masterly researches on the motion of Biela's comet will be aware that he arrived at the conclusion that the disruption of the comet, by whatever cause effected, took place in heliocentric longitude 318.6°, and latitude + 12.0°, distance 4.36, which position he states the comet occupied in November, 1844. In fact if we adopt Hubbard's final elements for perihelion passage in February, 1846, we find for 1844, November 16.0 G.M.T., longitude 318° 36′, latitude + 12° 2′, radius-vector 4.3665, and the true anomaly 209° 57′. At the time when Hubbard's investigation was made, no one of the known minor planets attained this distance from the sun. We are now acquainted with several whidh recede further, towards aphelion passage, and an encounter between the comet and a small planet might explain the phenomenon which occasioned so much astonishment in 1845–46. The orbits of some 230 of these bodies have been calculated, but on submitting them to examination with a view to discover whether any one of the planets could pass through the point indicated by Hubbard as that of the separation of Biela's comet, we arrive at a negative result. Andromache recedes to a distance of 4.723 from the sun, Ismene to 4.590, and Hilda to 4.632, but at such distances all three are much nearer to the plane of the ecliptic than Hubbard's position. We may therefore say that if the Biela catastrophe was occasioned by collision with a small planet, it was not one of the large number already calculated.
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Our Astronomical Column . Nature 28, 426 (1883). https://doi.org/10.1038/028426a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/028426a0