C/1881 K1 (Tebbutt)

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C/1881 K1 (Tebbutt)
(Great Comet of 1881)
Trouvelot - The great comet of 1881 - edit 1.jpg
The Great Comet of 1881, chromolithograph by E. L. Trouvelot
Discovery
Discovered by John Tebbutt
Discovery site Windsor, Australia
Discovery date22 May 1881
Designations
1881 III, 1881b [1]
Orbital characteristics [2]
Epoch 14 August 1881 (JD 2408306.5)
Observation arc 232 days
Number of
observations		157
Aphelion ~357 AU
Perihelion 0.735 AU
Semi-major axis ~180 AU
Eccentricity 0.9959
Orbital period ~2,395 years
Inclination 63.425°
272.63°
Argument of
periapsis 		354.23°
Last perihelion16 June 1881
TJupiter 0.504
Earth MOID 0.279 AU
Jupiter MOID 3.020 AU
Physical characteristics [3] [4]
Comet total
magnitude (M1)		4.1
1.0
(1881 apparition)

C/1881 K1, also called the Great Comet of 1881, Comet Tebbutt, 1881 III, and 1881b, is a non-periodic comet discovered by Australian amateur astronomer John Tebbutt on 22 May 1881 at Windsor, New South Wales. [5] It is called a great comet because of its brightness at its last apparition. [6]

Contents

Observations

On 1 June, Tebbutt found the length of the tail to be 8° 38′. The comet was observed in the southern hemisphere from its discovery to 11 June; it then became visible in the night sky of the northern hemisphere by June 22 as a spectacular object to the naked eye. [7] On June 25 the tail's length was about 25° and the brightness of the nucleus was magnitude 1. [8] [9] [10] The comet was still visible to the naked eye in August but by the end of the month the tail was not discernible. [8] In the Alps, at an altitude of between 1,000 and 2,000 meters, Camille Flammarion observed the comet until the beginning of September. [11] The last successful telescope observation of the comet was on 15 February 1882. [8]

For Tebbutt's Comet of 1881, Henry Draper took the first wide-angle photograph of a comet's tail and the first spectrum of a comet's head. [12] [13] Andrew Common used his Newtonian reflecting telescope with 36-inch mirror to photograph the comet.

Orbit

Preliminary orbital calculations of C/1881 K1 by Benjamin Apthorp Gould and John Tebbutt noted a close resemblance with that of the Great Comet of 1807, suggesting that the two comets may be related to one another despite a long orbital period of 1,540 years. [14] However, recalculations by Johannes Riem in 1894 demonstrated that Tebbutt's comet had a longer orbital period between 2,409 and 2,446 years, concluding that the two great comets are totally different from one another. [8]

Tebbutt’s account

The Great Comet of 1881, image published in Die Gartenlaube Die Gartenlaube (1881) b 501 1.jpg
The Great Comet of 1881, image published in Die Gartenlaube

In his Astronomical Memoirs in the section entitled 1881, John Tebbutt gave an account of his discovery: [15]

This year, like 1861, was signalised by the discovery of a great comet. While scanning the western sky with the unassisted eye on the evening of May 22, I discovered just below the constellation Columba a hazy looking object which, from my familiarity with that part of the heavens, I regarded as new. On examining it with the small marine telescope previously referred to in these memoirs, I found it to consist really of three objects, namely, two stars of the 41⁄2 and 51⁄2 magnitude afterwards identified as γ1 and y2 Cæli, and a head of a comet. I could not find any trace of a tail, but on the 25th it exhibited a tail about two degrees in length. Immediately on its discovery I obtained, with the 41⁄2 equatorial, eight good measures of the nucleus from one of the bright stars just mentioned. On the following day I notified the discovery to the Government Observatories at Sydney and Melbourne. A series of filar micrometer comparisons was obtained at Windsor, extending from the date of discovery to June 11, when the comet disappeared from our morning sky and became an object for the northern observatories. ...

References

  1. ↑ "Comet Names and Designations". International Comet Quarterly. Retrieved 19 December 2024.
  2. ↑ "C/1881 K1 (Great Comet) – JPL Small-Body Database Browser". ssd.jpl.nasa.gov. Jet Propulsion Laboratory . Retrieved 20 December 2024.
  3. ↑ J. E. Bortle (1998). "The Bright Comet Chronicles". International Comet Quarterly. Retrieved 20 December 2024.
  4. ↑ G. W. Kronk (2003). Cometography: A Catalog of Comets. Vol. 2: 1800–1899. Cambridge University Press. pp. 472–483. ISBN   978-0-521-58505-7.
  5. ↑ C. Todd (8 June 1881). "THE GREAT COMET OF 1881". The South Australian Advertiser.
  6. ↑ "Les Grandes comètes du passé" [Great Comets of the Past]. PGJ Astronomie (in French). Archived from the original on 6 October 2010.
  7. ↑ "The Great Comet of 1881" . Scientific American. 45 (3): 32. 16 July 1881. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican07161881-32a. JSTOR   26076622.
  8. 1 2 3 4 W. Orchiston (1999). "C/1881 K1: A Forgotten Great Comet of the Nineteenth Century". Irish Astronomical Journal. 26 (1): 33–44. Bibcode:1999IrAJ...26...33O.
  9. ↑ P. Moore; R. Rees (2011). "Table 14.8 Selected list of brilliant comets, 1500–1900". Patrick Moore's Data Book of Astronomy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 270. ISBN   978-0-521-89935-2.
  10. ↑ L. Niesten (1883). "Observations sur l'aspect physique des comètes b 1881 et c 1881" [Observations on the physical appearance of comets 1881b and 1881c]. Annales de l'Observatoire royal de Belgique Nouvelle serie (in French). 4: 17–24. Bibcode:1883AnOBN...4...17N.
  11. ↑ C. Flammarion (1882). "Observations intéressantes - Les comètes". Les Étoiles et les curiosités du ciel [The Stars and Sky Curiosities: Interesting Observations - Comets] (in French). p. 669. ISBN   978-2-019-14847-8.{{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
  12. ↑ J. K. Drummond (2023). "New Zealand Observations of the Great Comet of 1881, C/1881 K1 (Tebbutt)". Essays on Astronomical History and Heritage. Historical & Cultural Astronomy. Springer. pp. 367–392. Bibcode:2023eahh.book..367D. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-29493-8_19. ISBN   978-3-031-29493-8.
  13. ↑ S. J. Gibson (2001). "Henry Draper Biography". Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Archived from the original on 21 March 2008.
  14. ↑ J. Tebbutt (1881). "Orbit elements of comet b 1881". The Observatory. 4: 299. Bibcode:1881Obs.....4..299T.
  15. ↑ J. Tebbutt (1908). "1881". Astronomical Memoirs. Sydney, Australia: Frederick W. White. pp. 48–54.
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