174 



ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA AND PROGEESS. 



found again Aug. 27, 1861. M. Schubert has 

 selected for it the name of Melete, daughter of 

 Uranus. The true Daphne meantime escaped 

 observation, until Aug. 31, 1862. Dr. Luther, at 

 Bilk, detected an asteroid of the llth magni- 

 tude, the resemblance of the plane of whose 

 path to that of the missing planet led him to 

 suspect that he had rediscovered it. His ob- 

 servations, extended to Sept. 11, render the 

 identity almost certain; though to establish 

 this positively will require a rigorous computa- 

 tion of all the observations of the two years, 

 1856 and 1862. This planet thus appears to 

 stand at present both as (41) and (75) ; so that 

 it must relinquish one or the other of these 

 numbers. The name of asteroid (65) having 

 also been changed, the following list of aster- 

 oids since the 50th presents, along with the 

 years of discovery, the names and order accord- 

 ing to the latest corrections. 



1858. 



Nemausa. 

 Europa. 

 Calypso. 

 Alexandra. 



" 55) Pandora. 

 [1857.] (56) Melete. 



1859. (57) Mnemosyne. 



1860. (58) Concordia. 

 " 59) Olympia, 

 " 60) Danae. 



" 61) Echo. 



" 62) Erato. 



1861. 



63) Ausonia. 



Comets. Comet III, 1861, telescopic, was 

 discovered, Dec. 29, by Mr. Tuttle, at the ob- 

 servatory of Yale College. Encke's comet, on 

 its return, was observed at the same place, Dec. 

 25, 1861, having at the time the appearance of 

 a minute nebula; its perihelion was reached 

 Feb. 6, 1862. Prof. Bond remarks of the comet 

 that it was " for some time visible to the naked 

 eye,"and showed a respectable tail 1 in length." 

 The appearances exhibited were similar to those 

 of previous visits, the chief singularity being, 

 as heretofore, that the coma first showed itself 

 as a faint luminous projection toward, the sun, 

 the reverse of the direction in which its elon- 

 gation usually occurs. Comet I, 1862, was dis- 

 covered near Cassiopeiao, July 2, by M. 

 Schmidt, of Athens, and on the same evening 

 by M. Tempel, of Marseilles ; its brightness that 

 of a star of 4-5th magnitude ; July 3, it was 

 seen by Prof. Bond, of Cambridge. Its rapid ap- 

 parent motion showed its nearness to the earth, 

 from which, July 4, it was distant only 9,000,000 

 miles. This is probably the first astronomical 

 discovery of any importance made within the 

 last 2,000 years in that city in which the foun- 

 dations of the science were laid. Comet II, 

 1862, was discovered July 18, by Mr. Thos. Si- 

 mons, at the Dudley Observatory, and on the 

 same evening by Mr. Tuttle, at Cambridge. It 

 was nearest the earth 33,000,000 miles Aug. 

 31 ; it remained five weeks within the circle of 

 perpetual apparition, its nucleus 100,000 miles 

 in diameter, tail nearly 18,000,000 miles in 

 length, or longer than that of the great comet 



of 1861 ; and but for the light of the moon, 

 then in its first quarter, it would have been 

 visible to the unaided eye. Comet III, 1862, is 

 the second of two comets discovered by Dr. 

 Bruhns, of Leipsic Observatory, on the nights 

 of Nov. 30, and Dec. 1, respectively. This 

 comet soon after ceased to be visible in the 

 northern hemisphere, becoming visible in the 

 southern, from which it was expected to return 

 to the northern heavens in Jan. and Feb., 1863. 

 The character of its orbit appears to differ from 

 that of the orbits of all other known comets. 

 The first of Dr. Bruhns' comets is to be styled I 

 of 1863, since it passes its perihelion in February 

 of this year. It was in December travelling 

 toward the constellation Bootes, rising about 1 

 in the morning. 



The brilliant and long-continued appearance 

 of Donati's comet, in 1858, has led to a consid- 

 erable extension of comet-literature. Among 

 the latest and most valuable of the additions to 

 this, is the "Account of the great comet of 

 1858, being vol. 3d of the Annals of the Astro- 

 nomical Observatory of Harvard College ;" by 

 Prof. G. P. Bond, Director of the Observatory. 

 The volume presents a more thorough discus- 

 sion of the physical peculiarities of the comet 

 referred to than has ever been published re- 

 specting any other, and is illustrated with 57 

 engravings in the best style, representing every 

 aspect assumed by the comet during the period 

 of its visibility, 275 days. 



A new theory of comets is offered by Mr. 

 Benjamin V. Marsh in the "American Journal of 

 Science," for Jan. 1862, in a paper entitled, "The 

 Distinguishing Features of Comets considered 

 as Phases of an Electrical Discharge, resulting 

 from Eccentricity of Orbit." In the same 

 journal, May, 1861, the author had argued that 

 an auroral streamer is due to a current of elec- 

 tricity originating in the upper part of the 

 earth's atmosphere, and from it shooting off 

 into space, the current carrying with it at 

 nearly its own velocity material particles from 

 the atmosphere, by rendering which luminous 

 its own course becomes visible, and being thus 

 seen (as he infers) throughout heights actually 

 of 500 to 600 miles, through which extent the 

 passage of the electricity itself is almost instant- 

 aneous. He now considers the question whether 

 the coma or tail of comets may not be of like 

 character. Either comets must be, in the material 

 composing them, unlike the other bodies of our 

 system ; or else their peculiar features must re- 

 sult from some conditions to which they alone 

 are exposed. But the number of the comets, 

 and their coming from every direction and 

 from all parts of space, would appear to show 

 that the former supposition cannot be true, 

 that they must contain every variety of mate- 

 rial constituting the bodies of our system. Now, 

 excepting the difference of their appearance, 

 the only other respect in which they differ from 

 all others of those bodies, and in which they 

 all agree among themselves, appears accord- 

 ingly to be that in the form of their orbits. In 



