Halley's Comet is the best-known comet, visible from Earth every 75 to 76 years.
Halley’s (rhymes with “daily’s”) Comet is the only short-period comet (a comet with an orbit lasting 200 years or less; long-period comet’s orbit for thousands of years) that is clearly visible to the naked eye from Earth.
Writer Mark Twain was born in 1835, two weeks after the comet passed Earth. In his autobiography he stated: “I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'” Twain died in 1910, the day following the comet's closest approach to Earth.
Halley was last visible in 1986. That year it was observed in detail by spacecraft, providing the first observational data on the structure of a comet. These observations supported the "dirty snowball" model – that a comet was composed of a mixture of volatile ices (water, carbon dioxide and ammonia) and dust.
The next predicted view of Halley's Comet from Earth will be July 28, 2061,
No comments:
Post a Comment