Page 29 Advertisements Column 1

New Zealand Mail, Issue 914, 6 September 1889, Page 29

2* &ESENtation. — Last Friday Mr George Bowden, who has bean connected for soma time with the Railway Department at Pitone, and who is leaving the district, was presented with a handsome gold watch as a token of the respocfe in which he is held in the district, A OfiTXMßLiisrG- Comet. From measure, ments made bj Mr Barnard at the Lick Observatory upon the comet discovered by him in September last the following statistics regarding it nj.ay ho deduced : As I have said in a previous note, thia comet, which, ifi how a long way past its has lost all sign of t%?. tajil which it ' had when nearest the sun, doubt the effect of thg, snu-a action. hpon the head of tho cc,me,t has become so small at its prosit dfatauce, 253,000,000 miles, that t'ho head ia no longer forced to give out those streams of matter which, showed to us as the comet’s tail. But the comet was subject to immense strains and stress in passing- that part of its orbit nearest the sun, and it is no;w sho wing the effect of the forces in the following way :—lts body is. evidently becoming disintegrated, and the fragments are seen to be streaming behind the comet in the form of a tail directed not from but toward the sun. This mass of matter was measured by Mr Barnard on July 16, and his measures show that its least possible length is 430,009 miles, and, its least possible diameter is 14i,0Q0 miles, so that the fragments which have already broken off from this comet amount to at least 70,000,000,000,000,000 cubic miles. The comet itself, which is 165,000,000 miles from the earth, is still fairly bright, and were it not for the fragments which are seen to follow it would seem to be in a perfectly normal condition. As it is, we know it must have lost an immense quantity of its original substance.