Abstract
Cienciae Investigación No. 2, February 1945, contains an article with the title “¿ Qué son los cometas?” by Enrique Gaviola, director of the Córdoba Observatory, which gives a short account of comets from ancient times up to the present. There is nothing new in the article, but it provides a useful summary of our knowledge of these visitors, dealing with the spectrograms of the gases in the head and tail, the masses deduced by the perturbations or lack of perturbations produced by comets, changes in luminosity due to varying distances from the sun, light pressure on the smaller particles, etc. The author conjectures that the asteroids were once brilliant comets—a view which is entertained by others, but lacking in conclusive evidence. There is a very fine photograph of Halley's Comet taken at Córdoba Observatory on May 7, 1910.
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What are Comets?. Nature 156, 79 (1945). https://doi.org/10.1038/156079a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/156079a0