Discovery
The comet was discovered on November 29, 1743, by Jan de Munck at Middelburg, and was independently sighted on December 9, 1743 by Klinkenberg at Haarlem, and by Chéseaux from the observatory at Lausanne on December 13. Chéseaux said it lacked a tail and resembled a nebulous star of the third magnitude; he measured the coma as five minutes across.
The comet brightened steadily as it approached perihelion. By February 18, 1744, it reportedly was as bright as the planet Venus (with an apparent magnitude of -4.6) and at this time displayed a double tail.
Read more about this topic: Great Comet Of 1744
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
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“It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)