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:
“I have known no experience more distressing than the discovery that Negroes didn’t love me. Unutterable loneliness claimed me. I felt without roots, like a man without a country ...”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 10 (1962)
“The discovery of the North Pole is one of those realities which could not be avoided. It is the wages which human perseverance pays itself when it thinks that something is taking too long. The world needed a discoverer of the North Pole, and in all areas of social activity, merit was less important here than opportunity.”
—Karl Kraus (1874–1936)
“There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)