The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-10-02
The Coming of The Comet
By Frederic J. Haslkin.


 The astronomers of the world are preparing to welcome a wandering comet back from the regions of space. For more than seventy years it has been out of mortal sight For thirty eight years 1t travelled away from the sun at the rate of more miles minute than the fastest railroad train can make in whole day It went so far that 1t was a half million miles beyond Neptune. and Neptune is at the edge of our solar System. more than three bil- lion miles away from the sun Then that mysterious law of gravity assert ed itself, and this heavenly traveller swung back around its elliptical path. For more than thirty years it has kept up the same tremandous pace it set as it went away. It Is now closer to us than Saturn. By the middle of october 1t will be only 630. 100000 miles away. By the middle of May. 1910 1t will have approached to within 95.000.000 miles of us. Then 1t will turn back once more, and speed away toward that end- less space from which it come.
 This strange visitor is none other than Halley's comet named after the eminent astronomer royal who predict ed it's return for the first time that man ever forecasted a comets return. This was in 1882. He carefully meas ured it's orbit. and got such other bear ings pertaining to it as enabled him to foretell it's return in 175S He said he would not be living when 1t returned. but called on impartial posterity to wit ness the fulillment of his prediction. For uncounted generations before this time the sapearance of this comet. as we'll as of others, was looked upon with superstitious dread The people thought they presaged wars. foretold pestilences. and were the forerunners of terrible convulsions of nature.
 Authorities disagree as to the first recorded appearance, of Haley's comet. One writer says that its first apearance was in 265 B. C., and that it was after wa1d supposed to have foretold the overthrow of Greece -bv the Romans. It's next appearance he puts In 130 B. c. Its brightness at this time is said to have surpassed the brightness of the sun, and was supposed to portend the girth of Mithridates. Its tail was so long that 1t took four hours to rise or set
 There were a number of well authen- ticated appearances of this comet up to I230 A. D. That wear the Mediter- ranean Sea froze over so that the mer- chants could cross 1t in carts In Eng land there was famine which took off 10000 people. and it was reported to have caused an electrical storm which continued fifteen days. During it's appearance in 1905 the Baltic Sea Is said to have been frozen over for fourteen weeks at one time. Its appear ance in 1856 was coineident with the fall of Constantinople. and it filled all Christendum with such superstitious dread that they added to the Ave Maria the prayer: Lord deliver us from tho devil. the Turks, and the comet"
 Halley's is one of six comets which belong to Neptune's family. That vast planet has been able to capture these six wanderers in the centuries that have passed, and none of them has ever been able to break away from it. Uranus has a family of three. and Saturn two. Jupiter has about thirty, and so vast are, the proportions of this biggest of all the planets that any comet venturesome enough to ever pass It's way is sure to get caught, and thereafter 1t must move according to Jupiter's commands.
 Men differ some as to how heavy Halley's comet Is. One of them says that you might put the whole thing In a sack and cerry it on vouT> should CT, provided you were a man of ordin- ary strength and could compress it tn5 to space small enough. Another as- tronomer figures that It's mass is about equivalent to that of ball of iron 150 miles in diameter. At any rate. we
 
 stantial.s it's density being below that Of the most perfect vacuum man has yet been able to produce. A star that would not be visible through ten miles of the earth's atmosphere at sea level, can be seen 10.000.000 miles through a comets tail. The tail of this comet at it's ap- pearance in 1882 is said to have been 96.000.000 miles long.
 Travelling through space year in and year out is not conducive to the bril- liancy of a comet, any more than travel ing on way train in the country Is conducive to clean linen: so we do not need to expect to see Halley's comet showing up as brightly as it did in the earlier of its experiences as a universe trotter. Its last appearance, in 1885, was said at the time to be 'disappoint- ing, and the probability is that it will come back with even more if it's tail gone and with still less brilliancv.
 Comets are like people.-if they travel to fast they get into trouble. Twenty six miles a second is about the limit, and if they get beyond that gait they are travelling too fast to make the turns on their vast race courses, and so plunge headlong into the great unknown, perhaps never again to get even a sight of the solar system. If they move much slower than the limit however. they are in almost as bad .fix-a long planet gets hold of them, hurls them this way Tor that. on a very small orbit. then catches them again and hurls them off into another direc- ton, but all the tifno holding them from getting clear of it's control, That is why Jupiter has a family of thirty comets.
 Comets are divided into two classes. unexpected and periodic. Only com paratively few are periodic, yet 1t is expected that prolonged observations will make many of the unexpected class go over into the periodic class. Some of them have such vast orbits that it takes them tens of thousands of years to return. The comet which appeared in 1858. one of the most