Halley's Comet - Edmond Halley's Prediction, Ancient And Modern Perspectives
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Halley's comet, a periodic comet usually appearing every 76 years, is named after English astronomer Edmond Halley (1656-1742), the first person to accurately predict the return of a comet. This famous comet follows a retrograde (east-west), elliptical orbit, providing a magnificent, astronomical spectacle. In 1910, Earth passed through its brilliant, fan-shaped tail which soared 99 million mi (160 million km) into space. During its last apparition (appearance) in 1986, space probes and ground-based technology gathered valuable scientific data on its size, shape, and composition. In 2024, the comet will reach aphelion (furthest point from the Sun) millions of miles outside Neptune's orbit, make a U-turn, and begin its thirty-first observed return to perihelion (point nearest the Sun) inside the orbit of Venus, arriving in 2061. Observed by Chinese astronomers in 240 B.C. and maybe even 466 B.C., Halley's Comet may make 3,000 more revolutions and live another 225,000, if recent estimates calculated from data collected by the space probe Giotto are correct.
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In the late seventeenth century, comets were believed to follow parabolic (U-shaped) orbits and appear only once. The gregarious, outgoing Edmond Halley boldly suggested to his reclusive but genius friend, Isaac Newton, that comets may travel in an ellipse and appear more than once. Newton initially rejected the idea, even though his laws of motion and gravitation clearly allowed for such orbits. …
A different picture preceded Halley's 1986 apparition. Astronomers worldwide trained their telescopes on the heavens and the "International Halley Watch" became the largest international scientific cooperative ever. Ironically, the comet was first seen by a California Institute of Technology graduate student, David Jewitt, and staff astronomer, Edward Danielson, who "bo…
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over 3 years ago
thanks for the information it was very helpful.