The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1859-07-21

The CoMET's ROUND OF TRAvELs.-Though much
has already been published regarding our recent
distinguished visitor, DoDati's comet, there are many
who will be interested in the following extracts from
an article in the London Times, suggested by the
calculations of astronomers estimating the time of
this comets journey round the sun at 2495 years.
The Times says
Modern science establishes that the range of our
present visitor, though immensely wide compared
with our planetary proportions, is straitened, indeed,
compared with stellar distances. He has his
tether in the attraction of the sun, rs we have. He
can travel, indeed, $50 times further from the sun
than we can, and about twelve times further than
Neptune, the most distant and last discovered planet
of our system but even this does not carry him one
thousandth part of the distance Of the nearest fixed
star. Let any one take a half sheet of note paper, and,
marking a circle with n sixpence in one corner of it,
describe therein our solar system, drawing the orbits
Of the earth and the inferior planets as small as he
can by the aid Of n magnifying-glass If the cir
cumference of the ~sixpence stands for the orbit of
Neptune, then an oval filling the page will fairly
represent the orbit of our comet, and if the paper be
laid on the pavement under the west door OF st.
Paul's, the length of that edifee will inadequately
represent the distance of the nearest fixed star. That
the comet should take more than 1000 years to
travel round the page of note paper we have suppos-
ed, is explained by its great diminution of speed as
it recedes from the sun. At its perihelion, as we
have seen it move lately, il has travelled 127 900
miles an hour, or more than twice as fast as the earth.
whose motion is about a thousand miles a minute.
At Its aphelion, however, or greatest distance from
the sun, the comet is a very slow body, sailing along
as If doubtful whether to return, at the rate of 480
miles an hour. This is only eight times the speed of
n railway express. At this pace, even if the comet
could wholly shake off the attraction of the sun,
which it certainly could not, AMI were it to travel on
ward in a straight line, the lapse of a million years
would find it still travelling halfway between our
sun and the nearest fixed star. Comets, then, can
hardly be imagined visitors from our system to any
other, or from any other to our own. There is every
reason to believe they belong to us, and are only
planets of a lighter material, less settled construction,
more eccentric orbits, and somewhat more devious
path than our own solid globe. 1t is hardly possible
to look at them without seeing that they replenish,
and perhaps vivify, the subtle medium through
which they diffuse their bright products, and which
offers a certain resistance to their motion. As to
danger of collision, of ~blighting shower, or pernicious
breath, it is as nothing compared with the thousand
and one chances on which mortal life depends. 1t
always hangs on n thread, and that thread is not
weakened to the amount of one fibre by all the
millions of comets which a French philosopher cal
culates to move in our system.