Great Southern Comet of 1887


The Great Southern Comet of 1887, or C/1887 B1 using its International Astronomical Union designation, was a bright comet seen from the Southern Hemisphere during January 1887. Later calculations indicated it to be part of the Kreutz Sungrazing group.
A curious feature of the comet was that few, if any observations were made of a cometary head or nucleus. As a result, some older astronomical texts refer to it as the "Headless Wonder".

Discovery

The comet was officially discovered by astronomer John Macon Thome at Córdoba, Argentina, on January 19, at which point it was located in the constellation Grus. However, correspondence from William Henry Finlay suggests that it may also have been seen from Blauwberg, South Africa, on January 18. At the time of discovery the comet had already passed perihelion a week earlier, and its closest approach to Earth had been a month earlier.

Observations

The comet reached first magnitude, and was widely observed by astronomers in the Southern Hemisphere for the remainder of January. On the 22nd Finlay described it as a "pale narrow ribbon of light, quite straight" of about 35 degrees in length, though no cometary head could be distinguished. On the 23rd, Thome recorded a tail length of over 40 degrees, but like other observers stated he could not find a nucleus. On January 27, C. Todd recorded seeing the comet's head as a "diffused nebulous mass", but noted a break between the head and the tail.
Following the publication of an ephemeris by S. C. Chandler, which suggested the comet could be located 20° from Rigel by the end of February, astronomers in the United States eagerly waited for it to move far enough into northern skies to be visible. However, the comet faded extremely rapidly, and never became visible from northern latitudes. It was last observed by John Tebbutt from New South Wales on January 30, a relatively short period of observation overall for a large comet.

Analysis

The first, speculative, orbit was calculated by Heinrich Kreutz; however definitive calculation was difficult because no observations were made of the nucleus. By February, Finlay had derived an orbit which linked the comet firmly to the Kreutz Sungrazing group. A more definitive orbit was calculated in 1978 by Zdeněk Sekanina, based on the assumption that the comet's head was on a great circle "through the sun and inner part of the tail".
Sekanina was subsequently to speculate that the unusual appearance of the comet was due to a "tail formation event", an outburst of cometary dust, about 6 hours after perihelion. This event and the rapidly fading brightness, Sekanina argued, showed that C/1887 B1, along with C/1945 X1, represented a class of comets in between the "great" sungrazers and the many smaller objects discovered by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory.