Close Approach To Earth
On July 1, 1770, the comet passed 0.015 astronomical units from Earth, or approximately 6 times the radius of the Moon's orbit. Charles Messier measured the coma as 2° 23' across, around four times the apparent angular size of the Moon. An English astronomer at the time noted the comet crossing over 42° of sky in 24 hours; he described the nucleus as being as large as Jupiter, "surrounded with a coma of silver light, the brightest part of which was as large as the moon's orb".
Messier was the last astronomer to observe the comet as it moved away from the Sun, on October 3, 1770.
Read more about this topic: Lexell's Comet
Famous quotes containing the words close, approach and/or earth:
“And then I know of no better way
To close a road, abandon a farm,
Reduce the births of the human race,
And bring back nature in people’s place.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“... the ordinary is simply the universal observed from the surface, that the direct approach to reality is not without, but within. Touch life anywhere ... and you will touch universality wherever you touch the earth.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)
“There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)