page_title: Biela's Comet
section_title: Disintegration
hierarchical_section_title: Biela's Comet / Disintegration
caption_attribution_description: English: Shower of Andromedids, Nov 27th 1872, seen over France
context_page_description: Biela's Comet or Comet Biela was a periodic Jupiter-family comet first recorded in 1772 by Montaigne and Messier and finally identified as periodic in 1826 by Wilhelm von Biela. It was subsequently observed to split in two and has not been seen since 1852. As a result, it is currently considered to have been destroyed, although remnants appeared to have survived for some time as a meteor shower, the Andromedids.
context_section_description: The comet was recovered on November 26, 1845, by Francesco de Vico. Initially a small, faint nebulosity, subsequent observations showed that something remarkable had happened to it. Matthew Fontaine Maury, observing on 14 January 1846, noted that an apparent companion was located 1 arc minute north of the comet. After this announcement many astronomers began observing the comet, and noted that the two elements (usually referred to as "Comet A" and "Comet B" in modern nomenclature) alternated in brightness, developing parallel tails as they approached perihelion. Some observations indicated an "archway of cometary matter" extending between the two nuclei, which might suggest that the comet had split into many more pieces than two, but were simply too faint to be observed individually.
  In 1852 the comet was again recovered more or less as predicted, with "Comet A" being recovered first, by Angelo Secchi on August 26. "Comet B" was finally relocated on September 16, and once again both nuclei alternated in brightness during the period of observation. "A" was last detected on this apparition on September 26 and "B" on September 29, in both cases by Otto Wilhelm Struve. Subsequent orbital calculations indicated that the nuclei had probably split around 500 days before the 1845 apparition, though more recent work has determined that it may have occurred near aphelion in late 1842.
  Neither part could be found on their predicted periodic returns in 1859 (in any case an unfavourable return for viewing), 1865, and 1872. However, on November 27, 1872, a brilliant meteor shower (3,000 per hour) was observed radiating from the part of the sky where the comet had been predicted to cross in September 1872. This was the date when Earth intersected the comet's trajectory. These meteors became known as the Andromedids or "Bielids" and it seems apparent that they were produced by the breakup of the comet.  The meteors were seen again on subsequent occasions for the rest of the 19th century, but have now faded away, probably due to gravitational disruption of the main filaments.
caption: The Andromedid or Bielid meteors as seen on the night of November 27, 1872.
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