Celestial Motions; A Handy Book of Astronomy (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 Excerpt: ...was predicted for the 13th day of that month in the year 1866; that this was duly verified, doubtless many of our readers can themselves remember as eye-witnesses of it. Not long afterwards, the meteors seen about the 10th of August were subjected to a similar examination, with the result that they too move in an elliptic orbit round the Sun, and also in a reverse direction to that of the Earth and planets; but this orbit is much more eccentric than that of the November meteors, and though at perihelion it meets the The Comet discovered, on-December 1S.1SGS moves in. the some orbit; the large arrows show the directum, of, motion-or the Cornel and meteor.?; the smalt, arrows those of the planets. The display was not remarkable either in 1899 or 1900; the meteors are probably more diffused than formerly, and have also been affected by planetary perturbation. Earth's orbit, at aphelion it stretches far beyond the orbit of Neptune. These discoveries were speedily followed by another, the priority in which belongs to Prof. Schiaparelli of Milan. It is that both these meteoric orbits are identical with those of two comets, which, therefore, must be regarded as having some very close and intimate connexion with the meteoroids. The orbit of the mid-November meteors has the same elements as that of a small comet which was discovered by Tempel at Marseilles on the 19th of December, 1865, passed its perihelion on the nth of January, 1866, and was found to have a period of 33 years. And the orbit of the meteors of August 10th coincides with that of the third comet of 1862 (discovered by Professor Swift on the 15th of July, and visible to the naked eye during part of August and September), which has been calculated to revolve round the Sun in a period of about 123 years...