The Great Comet of 1843, formally designated C/1843 D1 and 1843 I, was a long-period

comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ...

which became very bright in March 1843 (it is also known as the Great March Comet). It was discovered on February 5, 1843, and rapidly brightened to become a

great comet A great comet is a comet that becomes exceptionally bright. There is no official definition; often the term is attached to comets such as Halley's Comet, which during certain appearances are bright enough to be noticed by casual observers who ar ...

. It was a member of the

Kreutz Sungrazers The Kreutz sungrazers ( ) are a family of sungrazing comets, characterized by orbits taking them extremely close to the Sun at perihelion. They are believed to be fragments of one large comet that broke up several centuries ago and are named for G ...

, a family of comets resulting from the breakup of a parent comet (

X/1106 C1 X/1106 C1, also known as the Great Comet of 1106, was a great comet that appeared on 2 February 1106, and was observed around the world from the beginning of February through to mid-March. It was recorded by astronomers in Wales, England, Japan ...

) into multiple fragments in about 1106. These comets pass extremely close to the surface of the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

—within a few solar radii—and often become very bright as a result.

Perihelion

First observed in early February, 1843, it raced toward an incredibly close

perihelion An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any elli ...

of less than 830,000 km on February 27, 1843; at this time it was observed in broad daylight roughly a

degree Degree may refer to: As a unit of measurement * Degree (angle), a unit of angle measurement ** Degree of geographical latitude ** Degree of geographical longitude * Degree symbol (°), a notation used in science, engineering, and mathematics ...

away from the

. It passed closest to Earth on March 6, 1843, and was at its greatest brilliance the following day; unfortunately for observers north of the equator, at its peak it was best visible from the Southern Hemisphere. It was last observed on April 19, 1843. At that time this comet had passed closer to the Sun than any other known object.

Tail

The Great Comet of 1843 developed an extremely long tail during and after its

passage. At over two

astronomical unit The astronomical unit (symbol: au, or or AU) is a unit of length, roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun and approximately equal to or 8.3 light-minutes. The actual distance from Earth to the Sun varies by about 3% as Earth orbits ...

s in length, it was the longest known cometary tail until measurements in 1996 showed that

Comet Hyakutake Comet Hyakutake (, formally designated C/1996 B2) is a comet, discovered on 31 January 1996, that passed very close to Earth in March of that year. It was dubbed the Great Comet of 1996; its passage near the Earth was one of the closest com ...

's tail was almost twice as long. There is a painting in the

National Maritime Museum The National Maritime Museum (NMM) is a maritime museum in Greenwich, London. It is part of Royal Museums Greenwich, a network of museums in the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site. Like other publicly funded national museums in the Unite ...

that was created by astronomer

Charles Piazzi Smyth Charles Piazzi Smyth (3 January 1819 – 21 February 1900) was an Italian-born British astronomer who was Astronomer Royal for Scotland from 1846 to 1888; he is known for many innovations in astronomy and, along with his wife Jessica Duncan P ...

with the purpose of showing the overall brightness and size of the tail of the comet.

Orbit

Estimates for the

orbital period The orbital period (also revolution period) is the amount of time a given astronomical object takes to complete one orbit around another object. In astronomy, it usually applies to planets or asteroids orbiting the Sun, moons orbiting planets ...

of the comet have varied from 512 ± 105 years ( Kreutz's classical work from 1901), 654 ± 103 years (Chodas2008 unforced solution), 688 years (

JPL Horizons JPL Horizons On-Line Ephemeris System provides access to key Solar System data and flexible production of highly accurate ephemerides for Solar System objects. Osculating elements at a given epoch (such as produced by the JPL Small-Body Databas ...

barycentric epoch 1852 solution), and 742 years (Chodas2008 forced solution based on a presumed identity with X/1106 C1). But the comet was only observed over a period of 45 days from March 5 to April 19, and the uncertainties mean it likely has an orbital period of 600 to 800 years.

Musical depiction

The Mexican composer Luis Baca composed a waltz for piano, ''El cometa de 1843.'' It appeared as no. 13 in ''Instructor filarmónico, periódico semanario musical, Tomo primero '' (Mexico, 1843)

References

External links

"Der Komet" in ''Illustrite Zeitung'', 1843 (German with 1 drawing)
*

* ttp://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?great_comets Donald Yeomans, "Great Comets in History" (Accessed 7/21/08)br>C/1843 D1 (Great March Comet), cometography.com
*[http://webfiles.wulib.wustl.edu/units/music/catalog/b26225402.pdf ''Instructor filarmónico, periòdico semanario musical, Tomo primero'', page 53; digitized by the Gaylord Music Library, Washington University in St. Louis] {{DEFAULTSORT:1843 Great Comet Periodic comets Kreutz Sungrazers Astronomical objects discovered in 1843, 18430205 Great comets

Perihelion

Tail

Orbit

Musical depiction

See also

References

External links