140 ASTRONOMY FOR lSs9, 1890. 



.'Specially noteworthy, ainounliiij;- to 2^ tiiiu's the distance of the earth 

 Irorn the sun, a distance which seems to have been sur|)asse(l in the 

 catalogue of comets only by comet 1885 IT, with a perihelion of 2A, and 

 the comet of 1729, with i)eiilieli<m distance 4. 

 (•omet 1889 111: j Mr. Barnard discovered another comet at about 



= Comet c 1889. j 2 o'clock on the mornin^j of June 21, in the con- 

 stellation Andromeda. x\.t the time of discovery the comet was only 

 three days past perihelion. It was then very faint and rapidly became 

 still fainter, being last observed on August G. The elements computed 

 by P>erberich show considerable ellipticity in the orbit, the period of 

 revolution being 128 years, 

 ('omet 1889 IV: ; A tolerably bright comet was discovered with the 



= Comt't e I8sy. j naked eye by Mr. J. Ewen Davidson at Brans- 

 combe, Mackay, Queensland (latitude -21° 0' south), on July 19. It 

 had a sharp, stellar nucleus, and a tail 30' long; in a photograph 

 taken by Barnard at the Lick Observatory on July 30, the tail could be 

 followed still farther, to a distance of almost 1° from the head. A second 

 tail was reported by Kammermauu, of Geneva, on the 17th of August, 

 and a segmentation of the nucleus by Ricco about a week earlier. 



Professor Holden finds that the brightest part of the tail was r^l^ 

 of the brightness of the brightest part of the solar corona during the 

 ecli[)se of January I, 1889, and htttt^otto that of the full moon. 



The comet was followed in the northern hemisphere to about the end 

 of the year. 



The si)ectrum according to the Lick and Palermo observations in 

 July and August showed no peculiarity; the carbon bands, and the 

 continuous spectrum of the nucleus, alone being recorded. 

 Comet 1889 V: ; William R. Brooks, of Ceneva, iNew York, while 



— Comet d 1H8 'J. [ sweeping in the southwestern sky on the morning 



of July 6, 1889, detected a suspicious looking nebulous object, the com- 

 etary character of which he was able to confirm on the following 

 morning; it was then faint, of about 11th magnitude, a diameter of 1', 

 stellar nucleus, and tail 10' long. The comet attracted no especial 

 attention from a.stronomers till August 1, when Barnard discovered 

 that it had two small and nebulous companions, and on the morning 

 following it was evident that these two objects were moving with the 

 l)arent comet through si)ace. Mr. Barnard says: 



" On August 3 they were examined with the 36-inch equatorial, which 

 showed the whole group very beautifully. Each of the companions had 

 a very small nucleus and condensation in a very small head and a short 

 faint tail, i)resenting a perfect miniature of the larger one, which was 

 pretty bright and well developed, with small nucleus and slightly fan- 

 shaped tail l'^ long. There was tiien absolutely no nebulous connection 

 with the larger, nor has there been at any time since, either in the 12- 

 inch or in the Sfi-incli telescope. Notliing whatever has been seen here 

 of the nebulous envelope spoken of by the Vienna observers as appar- 



