There are, indeed, reasons for believing, not only, as I have already indicated, that the outburst in the sun was caused by the downfall of meteoric masses, but that those masses were following in the train of a known comet, precisely as the November meteors follow in the train of Tempel’s comet (II., 1866). For we know that November meteoric displays have been witnessed for five or six years after the passage of Tempel’s comet, in its thirty-three year orbit, while the August meteoric displays have been witnessed fully one hundred and twenty years after the passage of their comet (II., 1862).[15] Now only sixteen years before the solar outburst witnessed by Carrington and Hodgson, a magnificent comet had passed even closer to the sun than either Tempel’s comet or the second comet of 1862 approached the earth’s orbit. That was the famous comet of the year 1843. Many of us remember that wonderful object. I was but a child myself when it appeared, but I can well remember its amazing tail, which in March, 1843, stretched half-way across the sky.
“Of all the comets on record,” says Sir J. Herschel, “that approached nearest the sun; indeed, it was at first supposed that it had actually grazed the sun’s surface, but it proved to have just missed by an interval of not more than 80,000 miles—about a third of the distance of the moon from the earth, which (in such a matter) is a very close shave indeed to get clear off.”
We can well believe that the two meteors which produced the remarkable outburst of 1859 may have been stragglers from the main body following after that glorious comet. I do not insist upon the connection. In fact, I rather incline to the belief that the disturbance in 1859, occurring as it did about the time of maximum sun-spot frequency, was caused by meteors following in the train of some as yet undiscovered comet, circuiting the sun in about eleven years, the spots themselves being, I believe, due in the main to meteoric downfalls. There is greater reason for believing that the great sun-spot which appeared in June, 1843, was caused by the comet which three months before had grazed the sun’s surface. As Professor Kirkwood, of Bloomington, Indiana, justly remarks, had this comet approached a little nearer, the resistance of the solar atmosphere would probably have brought the comet’s entire mass to the solar surface. Even at its actual distance, it must have produced considerable atmospheric disturbance. But the recent discovery that a number of comets are associated with meteoric matter travelling in nearly the same orbits, suggests the inquiry whether an enormous meteorite following in the comet’s train, and having a somewhat less perihelion distance, may not have been precipitated upon the sun, thus producing the great disturbance observed so shortly after the comet’s perihelion passage.