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About The daily gazette-times. (Corvallis, Benton County, Or.) 1909-1921 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 2, 1909)
The Approach sf Halley's Comet Historic Celestial Marvel, With a Head as Large as the Moon, Recently Sighted .at Heidelberg. Germany.' Will Soon Be Visible to he Naked Eye the World Over. Has Traveled Thousands of Mil lions of Miles In Its Journey Toward the Sun Astronomical Expert Tells Why Thete Is No Collision Possible With It. 0 By FREDERIC CAMPBELL. I President of the department of astrono my. Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Scl f nces. jplFTER an absence of seventy, (five years, that .monster of the JpL skv Halley's comet, is close to Its return. Already it is sight ed and photographed after being waited for for years 'and looked for for months. On Sept. 11 Professor Wolff of Heidelberg observatory, Germany, got his great telescope on the. wan dering son of the solar family and wired all the principal observatories to prepare to welcome the prodigal -home. They are few who- have access to the great telescopes, but those who do may now sight this celestial marvel in advance of the rest of mankind, who will have to wait till December to gaze upon the wondrous spectacle. Even without a telescope it is of In terest to know just where the comet now is. Most people who understand anything about the heavens are famil iar with the curiously shade and bril liantly . studded winter constellation Scnown as Orion. This now rises soon lifter midnight and by 2 o'clock In lhe morning is well above those mists 'that hang about the horizon. The ?tright whitish star at the west of the rectangular figure Is Rlgel. The bright reaoisn one at tne east is Beteiseux. Xooking off to the east of Betelgeux another bright star is seen. This Is .Procyon, in the constellation Canis Mi nor, a ongmer star man euuer is seen .south wa rd that is, Sirius bright st of all the fixed stars. Draw imaginary lines connecting Betelgeux, Procyon and Sirius and you have a great equilateral triangle. One-third the distance along the line from Be telgeaux to Procyon stands the comet. It will not "remain there, for it is mov- the two crossing points about Nov. 1 and May 1. It will thus be seen that we make a good escape, though a' little narrow in the latter case, inasmuch as there is a margin of only about a month and a half at that point. But even if the earth were at the crossing points at the same time with the comet nothing could -happen for the. reason that the two bodies do" not travel in the same plane or on the same level. At the first crossing the comet goes over and at the second it goes under the earth, so that there is no. danger of collision at either point any more than there is. of collision between a surface car and an elevated train on the one hand or between a surface car and a subway train on the other. It has been calculated that the nearest possible approach of the comet to the earth would be 6,000,000 miles, but we shall be millions of miles farther sep arated than that even when nearest Source of Comets Unknown. It used to be believed that comets were entirely Irresponsible bodies, not under the. control of the same forces that control the planets. It was not perceived that the law of gravitation has them in its grip, as well as earth. Jupiter and Saturn, and that they fol low definite and well known curves. A comet originally , comes from we know not where. Something has shot it through infinite space, and it hap pens to pass within the range of our sun's gravitating power. At once it is attracted toward the sun and compel led to sweep down out of space and around the sun before it is released. Indeed, whether it shall be released Is altogether a question. . If the curve on which the comet approaches is what Is known as a parabola or a hyperbola it stands wide open ai the farther end, and the comet, having paid us a single 0. 1 .: Jilted - Mm 4 7. V ORBIT OF HALLEY'S COMET. ing with ever increasing speed as it nears the sun, but there is where it is now. TraveleOlany Millions of Miles. Now the question is raised, Where las this comet been for seventy-five years, and where does it come from now? We answer that it has been .away beyond the orbit of Neptune, ,the most distant world of our solar family -of which we have any knowledge. We are staggered by the earth's distance -of 93,000.000 miles from the sun, but Halley's comet has been thirty-five times as far as that and from that dis tance is returning to a point only 65,--000,000 miles from the sun, nearer than the planet Venus. At its great est distance, known as "aphelion,' the .sun would appear only as a bright star -and the cold would be so intense that rpossibly air. itself would freeze into liquid form. At its nearest approach to the sun that luminary would appear immensely greater than seen from the -arth, and the heat would dry up all -water courses and destroy all life, both 'vegetable and animal. Now, although the comet can be ac tually seen over only a Very small part of its course of thousands of mil lions of miles, such is the nature of Its .. -curve that the wonderful science of mathematics enables us to track it per fectly. Let us therefore follow, it in . Imagination, just as we do a railway n train by studying the time table. About last January the comet crossed the or ;bit of Jupiter and was 450,000,000 miles from us. 'Next February it will cross the orbit of Mars and will have taken 400,000,000 miles from its dis tance. About the last of March it is expected to cross the orbit of the earth. About ten days later it will cross the orbit of Venus. It will, then swing" abont the sun, reaching its perihelion, or point of nearest approach to the sun, May 10, according to one calculation, though according to another it may be .there some time In-April. It then be gins to push back into space again, and in so doing it again crosses the or- ' tiits of the planets about as follows: -Venus, May 28; earth, June 19; Mars, July 28; Jupiter, nearly a year later. If the comet twice crosses the orbit -of the earth it becomes a question of the utmost interest whether our globe Is liable to be run Into. It is reassur ing to be told that the earth will be at visit, sweeps back into space and never again appears in our sky. But if it be an ellipse it Is closed at both ends, and. after a certain period of absence; back it comes as certainly as tomorrow's sunrise. ' "" The truth is that all the planets, including the earth, are traveling about the sun," not on circles, but on ellipses, but their paths . are only slightly eccentric, while that of the periodical comet is extremely so. A boy's . round ; hoop when pressed out of shape becomes an ellipse, and the harder the pressure the more ellip tlcal .it becomes. -Such is the path of the periodical comet When the comet is as near the sun as the earth is, if its speed be more than twenty -six miles a second it will' describe a para bola .or a hyperbola and will never : come back. If it be less than the same It will describe an ellipse and will return at regular intervals. How Comets Are Captured. The periodical comets are believed to have been captured by some of the planets. A comet comes Journeying through space under the influence of the sun, intending to pay us but a single visit. It passes so near great Jupiter, for example, that ' its speed is slowed down below the critical point It is thereby compelled to change its orbit to an ellipse and stays with us for the rest of its life. Nep tune Is credited with capturing six comets, including Halley's; Uranus three, Saturn two, Jupiter about thir ty. One reason for believing that there is yet another undiscovered planet beyond Neptune is that a cer tain comet shows a curve which reach' es out to a distant point where a planet ought to be in order to account for Its introduction into our system. ; Haming of the Comet. ; It has been ascertained that the period of Halley's comet is in general -j about seventy-five years, though it is sometimes a little less and sometimes several years more, the differences be ing due to the influence of the planets which it passes In going and coming. This a therefore a historic comet and by no means an upstart, for it has tecently been traced back to more than 200 years before Christ . . Considering how young the - science identify appearances of this same com et In allthe following years: B. C. 240, A. D. 451, 760, 1006, 1145, 1222, 1301, 1378, 1456, 1531, 1607, 1682, 1759, 1835, 1910. In 1066 William the Conqueror was terrifying England, and the comet was looked upon as an omen of terri ble disaster. In 1456 all Europe was moved to terror - by this enormous sword of light held aloft nightly in the sky, and the pope directed that to the Ave Maria should be added the prayer, "Lord, , save "us from the Turk, the comet and the devil." It was at this time that the noonday call to prayer by the ringing of church bells was in troduced, which has never been aban doned. In 1759 the comet 'first came back according to prediction of the - great Sir Edmund Halley, the.friend of Newton, and it henceforth took upon itself his name. ' . There always has been and still Is much of mystery as to the nature of comets. Where they came from no one knows, but they are in the uni verse journeying through space. When first sighted a comet looks only like a faint nebula changing its position among the . fixed stars. As it draws nearer the sun It becomes brighter and begins to shoot out a tall. Tet nearer, the head can be recognized as quite distant from the tail and a bright core at the center of the head called the nucleus. Great comets like Halley's are described as presenting a head as large as the moon, shining with the brightness of Venus and stretching out the tail over one-third of the sky. Hal ley's comet has shown a tall forty-five degrees long, which - is equal to a pro cession of- ninety full moons. As it does not always appear the same, it is likely on the present occasion to have a length either greater or less. - - Peril In Its Head. The bead of a comet is the dangerous part consisting probably of a mass of particles like stones, held together by their mutual gravitation. The increas ing heat of the sun as it approaches that body develops vapors, which envelop tbe-nncleus and are driven back, into space in the form of the tail. It is note worthy that the tail always streams away from the swj,-.going before the head when the sun retires into space. This, so long a mystery Is now be lieved to be-due to the pressure of light from the sun, so great a force that not' less than 70,000 tons of it ever rest upon, the earth's surface. The tail is extremely thin, so that the faintest stars can be seen through a million miles of its thickness. The earth has once or twice passed through a comet's tail and suffered no harm. If, how ever, there should occur a head-on col-' lision with the nucleus it . would not only be the end of the comet but might seriously damage if not ruin the earth. If nothing more, it would be likely to introduce noxious gases into our at mosphere, which would as swiftly pro duce death as the descending fumes of Mont Pelee. We have already shown that no collision is possible with. Hal ley's comet, nor as long as we believe that human history is yet to be con summated and that a divine plan lies back of the universe can we indulge in now antiquated fears. Nothing is less probable, even astronomically, than a cometary collision. However, there Is some ground for believing that in that strange curiosity of the plains, Coon Butte, Ariz., we have the evidence that just once a comet struck the earth, but if so, whether before or after the ad vent of man, we have no means of knowing. ' ' Halley's comet will not be an appari tion of a moment, like a meteor, nor of a week or two. like the moon. On its last appearance it was visible the larger part of a year, and certainly for months we shall have our sky, partly at night and partly in the morning! transformed by the presence of this not unwelcome stranger. It will be seen the world over. Peary at the north pole and Shackleton at the south pole would each be cheered by its radiance, and seventy-five years hence a very few very old men will trem blingly point to the heavens and say that in their youth they saw yonder spectacle once before. I r SAN FRANCISCO, SAN JOSE, SANTA CRUZ, LOS ANGELES and all the principal cities of California. A Private Pullman Car for the Exclusive Use of the OREGON BOOSTER GIRtS All Expenses will be paid by Th Jazette-Times. Two weeks of sigM seeing, pleas-: . nre and recreation. The Oregon Booster Girls will be chaperoned by one of the most prominent matrons of Linn County. NOMINATE TOUR FAYOKITB TODAY Karnes will be published in the near future COOK'S POLAR BEAR FIGHT. North Pole Finder's Adventure In the Arctic Regions. On one occasion when he was pro ceeding south after the discovery of the north pole Dr. Frederick A. Cook had an exciting adventure with a po lar bear. He had drawn the canvas boat upon the ice. and the Eskimos had gone in search of game, leaving the doctor alone and without weapons or ammunition. The only food be had left was the shoulder of a seal which he was keeping for an emergency. Dr. Cook, who was asleep in . the boat, was suddenly awakened and saw a few yards away a bear" sniffing about Finally it pushed its nose in inquisitive fashion into the boat where Dr. Cook was lying. The explorer was scared, out he seized a runner of a sled and hit the bear. - This frightened the animal, but it returned and was about to attack when Dr. Cook shout ed loudly and advanced upon it, flour ishing the sled runner as he went. This demonstration so Impressed the animal that it turned tail and fled. Later it was killed by the Eskimos. After this Dr. Cook never remained alone. ' '' , . x Canary Colored Railroad Cars. Canary yellow has been .adopted as the standard color for the coaches, re frigerator cars and .all other box cars used in the passenger service on the Panama railroad. Tests to aseertaln the color best suited to withstand the local climatic conditions, which are unusually hard on exterior paints, were made with the result that yellow wnst ilpmnnstrntprl n nimprlnr lnarlnir f astronomy is, think of being able, to quality over the otherc-olors tried. RGIRL'S T01 VOTE SCHEDULE . . NEW SUBSCRIBERS " Daily GT., 3 mos, $1.50... . 500 votes Daily G.-T., 6 mos, $2.50. . . 1250 votes Daily G.tT., 1 year, $5.00. .. 3000 vote Daily G.-T., 2 years, $10.00. 7000 vote Daily G.-T., 3 years, $15.00.11000 votes Each additional year ' 5000 votes. Weekly G.-T., 1 year, $2.00. 500 votes Weekly G.-T., 2 yrs, $4.00.. 1250 votes Weekly G.-T., 3 yrs, $6.00.. 2500 votes Each additional year. . . . ....' 1500 votes COLLECTIONS AND RENEWALS Daily G.-T., 3 mos, $1.50.... 200 votes Daily G.-T., 6 mos, $2.50. . . 500 votes Daily G.-T.,' 1 year, $5.00. ; . 1500 votes Daily G.-T., 2 yrs, $10.00 . . 4000 votes Daily G.-T., 3 yrs, $15.00. . . 7000 votes Each additional year. ....... 3000 votes Weekly G.-T., 1 year,.$2.00. 200 votes Weekly G.-T., 2 yrs," $4.00.. 600 votes Weekly G.-T., 3 yrs, $6.00... 1250 votes Each additional year. . 1000 votes - CONDITIONS Read Carefully Any young lady is eligible to enter. Candidates may nominate themselves. Nominating coupon in this issue good for 1000 votes if voted on or before Saturday, October 9. Only one nomi nating coupon will be counted for each contestant. All nominations must be accompanied by proper address of can didate.. The county has been divided into two districts. One winner will be sent from each district. Candidates may secure subscriptions anywhere. Reports must be made to Contest Man ager at least once a week. At the close of the contest the votes will be counted by five judges, selected by the candidates. The lady who has received the highest number of votes in her dis trict will be declared the winner in her respective district. Successful candi dates must place themselves under the .guidance and direction of thechaperone and obey her reasonable commands. As the young-ladies who make up the party will, by their grace and presence, advertise our beautiful city as well as the state of Oregon, in no small way, they will be expected to wear such badge or badges as will be suitable for that purpose. Votes will be issued on old and new subscriptions. Votes are not transferable. Read the vote schedule. Oregon Booster Girl's Tour 7Vo of Oregon's Fairest Daugh ters Go From Benton County V See That Your Favorite Is One of Them. She Will Be t. , : ............ .... . .i Happy to Be One of The Booster Girls From Oregon The County has been Divided into the Following Districts: District No. 1 Corvallis and Additions District No. 2 Balance Benton County The contest will close in a few weeks. Enter now and win one of these Grand Trips. You will never know hpw popular you are until you enter this contest This trip is worth working for. Fffl out the coupon at once and mail to Contest Manager Corvallis Gazette-Times. Corvallis, Oregon.