Bright Comet

About five comets, on the average, are discovered every year. Eleven were found in 1925, ten in 1927. Most comets are visible only in telescopes. The average of naked-eye comets is less than one a year, and a really conspicuous one whirls into the solar system about once a decade.

On July 4 a Swiss astronomer named Plnsler discovered a moving speck not far from the bright star Algol in the constellation of Perseus. Last week it was a fuzzy spot just visible to the unaided eye. This week the Finsler comet is almost opposite the Pole Star in its path across the northern sky toward the Big Dipper. On Aug. 8, when it will be only some 50,000,000 mi. from Earth, it will have reached third magnitude, a brightness about equal to that of Megrez, the star at which the bowl of the Big Dipper is attached to its handle. The comet will then be brighter than any since "1927!^," an object which was first sighted ten years ago in Australia and which was visible even in the daytime.*

Comets are extremely thin aggregations of solid fragments, dust and gas. Their tails always point away from the sun, driven outward by the pressure of solar radiation. Telescope observation last week disclosed a rudimentary tail sprouting from Finsler's comet, a plume which will get longer, thicker and brighter as the object approaches the sun. On Aug. 10 the comet will pass right between the two middle stars of the Big Dipper's handle.

*Last year's Peltier comet was approximately as bright as the Finsler object is expected to be, but was marred by a nearly full moon. The Finsler comet will reach maximum brilliance in the dark of the moon.

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