NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Colonist, Volume LII, Issue 12730, 28 February 1910, Page 2

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

I H alley's Comet. Mr. A. C/.D. Crommelin, of Greenwich Observatory, was the chief speaker during a recent discussion on Halley's comet at the meeting of the British Astronomical Association. Mr Crommelin is the man who, in partnership with Mr. Cowell at the Observatory, has jnst won the prize open to the. astronomers of the world for' calculations as to the orbit of the- comet. His speech was preceded by ono from the Rev. Theodore E. 11. Phillips, of Ashtead, Surrey, who said he had seen the comet on November 16 through a 12jin reflector. The President of the society said he had seen the comet at Greenwich through a lOin guiding telescope, and found it "absolutely blazing." Although it was moonlight lie saw a stellar nucleus with very little nebulosity. He put a plate iv the camera, and the photograph next day showed the comet to be about the tenth magnitude. Mr. Crommelin then described his calculations. In January the. comet would be pretty near to the planet Mars, and possibly visible with binoculars. By the end of February it will have got too near the sun to be visible, and ii will be lost for two months. At the end of April it will be visible aB a morning star. Then came the interesting news that for the first time we shall have a transit of this comet ovei the sun. Mr. Crommelin thinks ii practically certain that there must be something solid in Halley's- comet, foi it could not otherwise have endured the 2,000 years it had been known and recurred every seventy-five years. The transit will be visible in Asia and in the Pacific. The best display of the comet is timed by Mr. Crommelin foi the last ten days in May, after which it will decline with great rapidity.