Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel
BIELA’S COMET. 409
the orbit of the earth, within ticenty thousand miles of its track, and but about one month before the earth would have arrived at the same spot !
This was shooting close to the bull’s-eye !
He estimated that it would lose nearly ten days on its return trip, through the retarding influence of Jupiter and Saturn ; but, if it lost forty days instead of ten, what then?
But the comet came up to time in 1832, and the earth missed it by one month.
And it returned in like fashion in 1839 and 1846. But here a surprising thing occurred. Jts prowimity to the earth had split it in two; each half had a head and tail of its own; each had set up a separate government for itself ; and they were whirling through space, side by side, like a couple of race-horses, about sixteen thousand miles apart, or about twice as wide apart as the diameter of the earth. Here is a picture of them, drawn from life.
Breta’s Comet, sPLit IN TWO.
(From Guillemin’s ‘‘ The Heavens,” page 247. Pp Cc