The career of Heinrich Olbers is a brilliant example of what may be done by an amateur in astronomy. He at no time did regular work in an observatory; he was never the possessor of a transit or any other fixed instrument; moreover, all the best years of his life were absorbed in the assiduous exercise of a toilsome profession. Born in 1758 at the village of Arbergen, where his father was pastor, he settled in 1781 as a physician in the neighbouring town of Bremen, and continued in active practice there for over forty years. It was thus only the hours which his robust constitution enabled him to spare from sleep that were available for his intellectual pleasures. Yet his recreation was, as Von Zach remarked,[241] no less prolific of useful results than the severest work of other men. The upper part of his house in the Sandgasse was fitted up with such instruments and appliances as restrictions of space permitted, and there, night after night during half a century and upwards, he discovered, calculated, or observed the cometary visitants of northern skies. Almost as effective in promoting the interests of science as the valuable work actually done by him, was the influence of his genial personality. He engaged confidence by his ready and discerning sympathy; he inspired affection by his benevolent disinterestedness; he quickened thought and awakened zeal by the suggestions of a lively and inventive spirit, animated with the warmest enthusiasm for the advancement of knowledge. Nearly every astronomer in Germany enjoyed the benefits of a frequently active correspondence with him, and his communications to the scientific periodicals of the time were numerous and striking. The motive power of his mind was thus widely felt and continually in action. Nor did it wholly cease to be exerted even when the advance of age and the progress of infirmity rendered him incapable of active occupation. He was, in fact, alive even to the last day of his long life of eighty-one years; and his death, which occurred March 2, 1840, left vacant a position which a rare combination of moral and intellectual qualities had conspired to render unique.
Amongst the many younger men who were attracted and stimulated by intercourse with him was Johann Franz Encke. But while Olbers became a mathematician because he was an astronomer, Encke became an astronomer because he was a mathematician. A born geometer, he was naturally sent to Göttingen and placed under the tuition of Gauss. But geometers are men; and the contagion of patriotic fervour which swept over Germany after the battle of Leipsic did not spare Gauss's promising pupil. He took up arms in the Hanseatic Legion, and marched and fought until the oppressor of his country was safely ensconced behind the ocean-walls of St. Helena. In the course of his campaigning he met Lindenau, the militant director of the Seeberg Observatory, and by his influence was appointed his assistant, and eventually, in 1822, became his successor. Thence he was promoted in 1825 to Berlin, where he superintended the building of the new observatory, so actively promoted by Humboldt, and remained at its head until within some eighteen months of his death in August, 1865.
On the 26th of November, 1818, Pons of Marseilles discovered a comet, whose inconspicuous appearance gave little promise of its becoming one of the most interesting objects in our system. Encke at once took the calculation of its elements in hand, and brought out the unexpected result that it revolved round the sun in a period of about 3-1/3 years.[242] He, moreover, detected its identity with comets seen by Méchain in 1786, by Caroline Herschel in 1795, by Pons, Huth, and Bouvard in 1805, and after six laborious weeks of research into the disturbances experienced by it from the planets during the entire interval since its first ascertained appearance, he fixed May 24, 1822, as the date of its next return to perihelion. Although on that occasion, owing to the position of the earth, invisible in the northern hemisphere, Sir Thomas Brisbane's observatory at Paramatta was fortunately ready equipped for its recapture, which Rümker effected quite close to the spot indicated by Encke's ephemeris.
The importance of this event can be better understood when it is remembered that it was only the second instance of the recognised return of a comet (that of Halley's, sixty-three years previously, having, as already stated, been the first); and that it, moreover, established the existence of a new class of celestial objects, somewhat loosely distinguished as "comets of short period." These bodies (of which about thirty have been found to circulate within the orbit of Saturn) are remarkable as showing certain planetary affinities in the manners of their motions not at all perceptible in the wider travelling members of their order. They revolve, without exception, in the same direction as the planets—from west to east; they exhibit a marked tendency to conform to the zodiacal track which limits planetary excursions north and south; and their paths round the sun, although much more eccentric than the approximately circular planetary orbits, are far less so than the extravagantly long ellipses in which comets comparatively untrained (as it were) in the habits of the solar system ordinarily perform their revolutions.
No great comet is of the "planetary" kind. These are, indeed, only by exception visible to the naked eye; they possess extremely feeble tail-producing powers, and give small signs of central condensation. Thin wisps of cosmical cloud, they flit across the telescopic field of view without sensibly obscuring the smallest star. Their appearance, in short, suggests—what some notable facts in their history will presently be shown to confirm—that they are bodies already effete, and verging towards dissolution. If it be asked what possible connection can be shown to exist between the shortness of period by which they are essentially characterised, and what we may call their superannuated condition, we are not altogether at a loss for an answer. Kepler's remark,[243] that comets are consumed by their own emissions, has undoubtedly a measure of truth in it. The substance ejected into the tail must, in overwhelmingly large proportion, be for ever lost to the central mass from which it issues. True, it is of a nature inconceivably tenuous; but unrepaired waste, however small in amount, cannot be persisted in with impunity. The incitement to such self-spoliation proceeds from the sun; it accordingly progresses more rapidly the more numerous are the returns to the solar vicinity. Comets of short period may thus reasonably be expected to wear out quickly.
They are, moreover, subject to many adventures and vicissitudes. Their aphelia—or the farthest points of their orbits from the sun—are usually, if not invariably, situated so near to the path either of Jupiter or of Saturn, as to permit these giant planets to act as secondary rulers of their destinies. By their influence they were, in all likelihood, originally fixed in their present tracks; and by their influence, exerted in an opposite sense, they may, in some cases, be eventually ejected from them. Careers so varied, as can easily be imagined, are apt to prove instructive, and astronomers have not been backward in extracting from them the lessons they are fitted to convey. Encke's comet, above all, has served as an index to much curious information, and it may be hoped that its function in that respect is by no means at an end. The great extent of the solar system traversed by its eccentric path makes it peculiarly useful for the determination of the planetary masses. At perihelion it penetrates within the orbit of Mercury; it considerably transcends at aphelion the farthest excursion of Pallas. Its vicinity to the former planet in August, 1835, offered the first convenient opportunity of placing that body in the astronomical balance. Its weight or mass had previously been assumed, not ascertained; and the comparatively slight deviation from its regular course impressed upon the comet by its attractive power showed that it had been assumed nearly twice too great.[244] That fundamental datum of planetary astronomy—the mass of Jupiter—was corrected by similar means; and it was reassuring to find the correction in satisfactory accord with that already introduced from observations of the asteroidal movements.
The fact that comets contract in approaching the sun had been noticed by Hevelius; Pingré admitted it with hesitating perplexity;[245] the example of Encke's comet rendered it conspicuous and undeniable. On the 28th of October, 1828, the diameter of the nebulous matter composing this body was estimated at 312,000 miles. It was then about one and a half times further from the sun than the earth is at the time of the equinox. On the 24th of December following, its distance being reduced by nearly two-thirds, it was found to be only 14,000 miles across.[246] That is to say, it had shrunk during those two months of approach to 1/11000th part of its original volume! Yet it had still seventeen days' journey to make before reaching perihelion. The same curious circumstance was even more markedly apparent at its return in 1838. Its bulk, or the actual space occupied by it, appeared to be reduced, as it drew near the hearth of our system, in the enormous proportion of 800,000 to 1. A corresponding expansion accompanied on each occasion its retirement from the sphere of observation. Similar changes of volume, though rarely to the same astounding extent, have been perceived in other comets. They still remain unexplained; but it can scarcely be doubted that they are due to the action of the same energetic internal forces which reveal themselves in so many splendid and surprising cometary phenomena.
Another question of singular interest was raised by Encke's acute inquiries into the movements and disturbances of the first known "comet of short period." He found from the first that its revolutions were subject to some influence besides that of gravity. After every possible allowance had been made for the pulls, now backward, now forward, exerted upon it by the several planets, there was still a surplus of acceleration left unaccounted for. Each return to perihelion took place about two and a half hours sooner than received theories warranted. Here, then, was a "residual phenomenon" of the utmost promise for the disclosure of novel truths. Encke (in accordance with the opinion of Olbers) explained it as due to the presence in space of some such "subtle matter" as was long ago invoked by Euler[247] to be the agent of eventual destruction for the fair scheme of planetary creation. The apparent anomaly of accounting for an accelerative effect by a retarding cause disappears when it is considered that any check to the motion of bodies revolving round a centre of attraction causes them to draw closer to it, thus shortening their periods and quickening their circulation. If space were filled with a resisting medium capable of impeding, even in the most infinitesimal degree, the swift course of the planets, their orbits should necessarily be, not ellipses, but very close elliptical spirals along which they would slowly, but inevitably, descend into the burning lap of the sun. The circumstance that no such tendency can be traced in their revolutions by no means sets the question at rest. For it might well be that an effect totally imperceptible until after the lapse of countless ages, as regards the solid orbs of our system, might be obvious in the movements of bodies like comets of small mass and great bulk; just as a feather or a gauze veil at once yields its motion to the resistance of the air, while a cannon-ball cuts its way through with comparatively slight loss of velocity.
It will thus be seen that issues of the most momentous character hang on the time-keeping of comets; for plainly all must in some degree suffer the same kind of hindrance as Encke's, if the cause of that hindrance be the one suggested. None of its congeners, however, show any trace of similar symptoms. True, the late Professor Oppolzer announced,[248] in 1880, that a comet, first seen by Pons in 1819, and rediscovered by Winnecke in 1858, having a period of 2,052 days (5·6 years), was accelerated at each revolution precisely in the manner required by Encke's theory. But M. von Haerdtl's subsequent investigation, the materials for which included numerous observations of the body in question at its return to the sun in 1886, decisively negatived the presence of any such effect.[249] Moreover, the researches of Von Asten and Backlund[250] into the movements of Encke's comet revealed a perplexing circumstance. They confirmed Encke's results for the period covered by them, but exhibited the acceleration as having suddenly diminished by nearly one-half in 1868. The reality and permanence of this change were fully established by observations of the ensuing return in March, 1885. Some physical alteration of the retarded body seems indicated; but visual evidence countenances no such assumption. In aspect the comet is no less thin and diffuse than in 1795 or in 1848.
The character of the supposed resistance in inter-planetary space has, it may be remarked, been often misapprehended. What Encke stipulated for was not a medium equally diffused throughout the visible universe, such as the ethereal vehicle of the vibrations of light, but a rare fluid, rapidly increasing in density towards the sun.[251] This cannot be a solar atmosphere, since it is mathematically certain, as Laplace has shown,[252] that no envelope partaking of the sun's axial rotation can extend farther from his surface than nine-tenths of the mean distance of Mercury; while physical evidence assures us that the actual depth of the solar atmosphere bears a very minute proportion to the possible depth theoretically assigned to it. That matter, however, not atmospheric in its nature—that is, neither forming one body with the sun nor altogether aëriform—exists in its neighbourhood, can admit of no reasonable doubt. The great lens-shaped mass of the zodiacal light, stretching out at times far beyond the earth's orbit, may indeed be regarded as an extension of the corona, the streamers of which themselves mark the wide diffusion, all round the solar globe, of granular or gaseous materials. Yet comets have been known to penetrate the sphere occupied by them without perceptible loss of velocity. The hypothesis, then, of a resisting medium receives at present no countenance from the movements of comets, whether of short or of long periods.