BEARDED STARS AND SCARED MONARCHS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 27, 1 February 1941, Page 18

BEARDED STARS AND SCARED MONARCHS

THOSE who have been scanning the skies the last few nights for a glimpse of the comets will have probably done so with no small amount of interest, but they have not been filled with the awe and trepidation which were* felt by their forefathers whenever one' of these celestial wanderers came close enough to the earth to be visible to the naked eye. Comets until comparatively recent times were regarded as harbingers of misfortunes of all kinds, and their appearance caused the most intense apprehension. "When beggars die there are no comets seen," but enter a comet and exit a ruling prince. But all rulers have not been afraid of them. Vespasian, for instance, when his friends were alarmed at the appearance of a flaming comet, told them not to fear. "This bearded star," he said, "concerns me not. Rather does it threaten my neighbour, the King of the Parthians, since he is hairy and I ami bald.'' On the • other hand, Lewis the Debonair was very much alarmed by the comet of 837. He tried his best to avert calamity by prayers, fasts, and the building of churches, but to no avail: he died —three years later. This was Halley's comet, the famous one which turned up again /in 1066 and i boded so iU for poor1 Harold, although c for Conqueror William it must have c been a star of good omen. This comet £ is graphically represented in the t famous Bayeux Tapestry. Halley's (. comet in; 1456 again figured in the c news. Three years previously the Turks had captured, Constantinople. Feeling was running high in Europe j and the comet was regarded as a sign c of Divine displeasure. The faithful, j therefore, were called upon to pray f •against the Turk and the comet. "A c great and gory sword" in lhe sky in 1528 thoroughly alarmed the world, c and the comet of 1556 so frightened r Charles V that he renounced jurisdiction over his vast estates and retired s to end his days in prayer and devotion. And so the story might be continued almost indefinitely. The superstitious and credulous have . always looked upon comets as messengers of ill omen, although of course there is no significance in the fact that when the present Government introduced its first Budget to an expectant New Zealand r there was a small comet in the offing. _ A Latin scribe of ancient days im- E plied that the appearance of ay comet - c was bound to be associated with disaster. His twentieth century^ counterpart, the modern Italian journalist, * may, in view of certain recent happenings, be inclined to agree, associating the comet's tail-with'the tail of the t British lion which Mussolini thought he could twist with impunity". t Comets are so called because of their a fancied resemblance to hair streaming I in the wind, the word coma meaning r hair. ■ They are also called besom V, stars—brooms . which sweep the sky \ They are much more numerous than \ most people think. Astronomers detect . about 300 a year, but the-vast majority c of these are very faint telescope objects. It is computed that there are t about 120,000 altogether in our solar 1 system. There is very little substan- b

tiality about a comet, and they are unlike 80-Peep's sheep which carried their tails behind them. A comet's gaseous tail always points away from the sun regardless of the direction In which the comet happens to be travelling, so its tail is often in front oi n Cunningham's ,comet, the fainter of the two now visible, is going away fron. the sun. therefore its tail is in from of it as a kind of advance guard. It waf calculated that it would approach to within about 35,000,000 miles of the sun in the middle of January, which is ■■> closer approach than comets usuali> make. They usually keep at more re spectful distance when describing their parabolic or elliptical course round the sun. \

"Some day," said the old philosopher Seneca, "there will arise a man wh<. will demonstrate in what region ' the cosmos comets make their way why they journey so far apart fron> other planets; what their size, their nature." Such a man has arisen ir the modern astronomer, but even n* does not know everything about comets and their capricious habits, and the layman is always intrigued oy then appearance, and by the oossibility of a comet doing something really spec tacular or unexpected.

The periods of many comets havo been accurately calculated, and it known when their return may of looked for. These period? vary fron> 3£ to many thousands of years an<" are more often long than short. B-.j' some comets fail to keep their appoint ments and iust disappear, while othersdisintegrate into meteors. Halley'« comet, with its 76-year period ha* never failed.since it was first recorded

(By H.M.)

in 240 B.C. ' Every calculated return, except that of 163 8.C., has been recorded, and there is no reason to suppose that there was no Halley's comet that year. All that happened was that it passed unnoted by the scribes of the day.

One reason why some of the comets fail to keep their appointments or are late is because in their comparatively close approach to the more distant planets they are so affected by the forces of gravity that an alteration is caused in their orbits.

One of the intriguing things about comets, whether old ones returning or new ones appearing, is that there is

deavour. Many men have lost. then lives during aviation's history trying and perfecting these stunts. Particularly was this true in the early dayt when men were first trying out the capabilities of the aeroplane and ex ploring that unknown medium, the thin air,

The first, stunt pilots oi them all of course, were the Wrighi brothers And their first achievements as airmen were investigations of the turn Simple as that manoeuvre is considered today, it was a wonderfuj ex hibition of control and skill in the early days. And the first flyers to accomplish turns were the Wrights.

In their original flying and in then soaring and gliding days the brother.*were content to master the technique of maintaining straight flight. They! made short straightforward hops I When a wing went down they usen I their controls to bring it up to thileve] again. This satisfied them in 1903 and during the early part oi 1904 when they, tested and continued fly v ing in a newer, more powerful plant than their original snip.

It was on September 15, 1904, tha the brothers began their experiments with turns. Wilbur made the first one —half a circle, or 180 degrees—in a flight of 2288 feet Five days laterwith some intervening practice—hf made a full turn of 360 degrees on 4 ■irnurnference of 4080 feet. The ex periments were made in their cowpasture airport at Dayton. . All the flying was done at heights of ten feet or less, x

Of the experiments Wilbur wrote: "On the first three trials/ we found that we had started a circle on too

no knowing how they will behave. There have been comets bright enough to be seen in daylight; comets with tails stretching right across the sky; comets with two. or more tails —that of 1744 had as many as six-^-and comets with no tail at all. Then there have been comets which have split into two, like Biela's in 1846, which then disappeared. <

The great comet of 1811 spread terror right through Europe, but made amends by causing, so it was believed, an exceptionally good vintage that year. Donati's comet of 1858 is also reputed to have caused an exceptional vintage. The comet of 1843 was vis-

ible in- daylight, and had a tail 186,000,000 miles in length. Halley's comet, the best known of all, although by no means the brightest, was rather disappointing when it last returned in 1911 after its usual 76 years of absence.

More than once the end of the world has been predicted as being imminent owing to the fact that the earth has been about to pass through a comet's tail. This it has done at least twice, but the earth still survives. In 1832 the earth narrowly missed a collision with a comet—a matter of 30 days or so and some 50,000,000 miles. But it was a close shave as far as celestial collisions are concerned.