the brighter central part of the coma. The circular form of the coma was uninterrupted on the side of the tail, which appeared as an extension of the faint nebulosity which formed the extreme margin of the coma.
The bright roundish spot of light in the centre, when examined with eyepieces magnifying from 200 to 600 diameters, presented merely a nebulous light without a defined form.
Spectrum of the Comet.—When a spectroscope furnished with two prisms of 60° was applied to the telescope, the light of the comet was resolved into three very broad bright bands, which are represented in the diagram.
In the two more refrangible of these bands the light was brightest at the less refran" gible end, and gradually diminished towards the other limit of the bands. This gradation of light was not uniform in the middle and brightest band, which continued of nearly equal brilliancy for about one-third of its breadth from the less refrangible end. This band appeared to be commenced at its brightest side by a bright line.
The least refrangible of the three bands did not exhibit a similar marked gradation of brightness. This band, though of nearly uniform brilliancy throughout, was perhaps brightest about the middle of its breadth.
These characters, which are peculiar to the light emitted by the cometary matter, must be distinguished from some appearances which the bands assumed in consequence of the mode of distribution of the light in the coma of the comet. The two more refrangible bands became narrower towards their most refrangible side, as well as diminished in brightness. This appearance was obviously not due to any dissimilarity of the light in the parts of the coma, but to the circumstance that as the light of the coma became brighter towards the centre, it was emitted by a smaller area of the cometary matter. The strong light of the central spot could be traced the whole breadth of the band; but the light surrounding this spot, in proportion as it became fainter and broader, was seen for a shorter distance, so that the light from the faintest parts near the margin of the coma was visible only at the brightest side of the band. Since in the least refrangible band a similar gradation of light did not take place, this band appeared of nearly the same width throughout.
The increasing brightness of the coma up to the brilliant spot in the centre showed itself in this band as a bright axial line fading off gradually in both directions.
On this evening I took repeated measures of the positions of these bands with the micrometer attached to the spectroscope. These measures give the following numbers for the commencement and termination of the three bands on the scale adopted in the diagram.
. (1094 ,(1298 (1589
First band<,, Second band<„ Third band^
(1196 (1440 (1700
I could not resolve the bands into lines. When the slit was made narrow the bands became smaller both in breadth and length, from the invisibility of the fainter portions. I suspected, however, the presence of two or three bright lines in the bright central part
of the middle band near its less refrangible limit. This part would consist chiefly of light from the bright central spot.
As has been stated, the middle band commences probably with a bright line; for the limit of the band is here abrupt and distinct. On the contrary the exact point of commencement and termination of the other bands could not be observed with certainty.
I could perceive no other bands, nor light of any kind beyond the three bands, in the parts of the spectrum towards the red and the violet.
When the marginal portions of the coma were brought upon the slit, the three bands of light could still be traced. When, however, the spectrum became very faint, it appeared to me to become continuous; but the light was then so very feeble that it could not be traced beyond the three bands towards the violet or the red.
On this evening I observed the spectrum of the comet in a larger spectroscope, which gives a dispersion equal to about five prisms. In this instrument the middle band was well seen. It retained its nebulous, unresolved character, and the abrupt commencement, as if by a bright line, already mentioned, was distinctly seen.
For convenience of comparison, the spectrum of Brorsen’s comet, and that of the gaseous nebulae, have been added to the diagram, fig. 2, Plate XXXIII. The spectrum of Brorsen’s comet consisted of three bright bands and a faint continuous spectrum. These bands appeared, as represented in the diagram, narrower than those of the comet now under examination. It is not possible to say to what extent this circumstance may be due to the much feebler light of this comet. Though the bands of Brorsen’s comet fall within the limits of position occupied by the broad bands of Comet II., they do not correspond to the brightest parts of these bands. In the middle band I suspected two bright lines, which appeared shorter than the band, and may be due to the nucleus. Brorsen’s comet differed from the two small comets which I had previously examined* in the much smaller relative proportion of the light which forms a continuous spectrum. In Brorsen’s comet the bright middle part of the coma seemed to emit light similar to that of the nucleus, in the other comets the coma appeared to give a continuous spectrum. The three comets resembled each other in the circumstance that the light of the central part was emitted by the cometary matter, while the surrounding nebulosity reflected solar light.
It will be seen in the diagram that the bands of Brorsen’s comet, and those of Comet II., occupy positions in the spectrum widely removed from those in which the lines of the nebulae occur. The spectra of the gaseous nebulae consist of true lines, which become narrow as the slit is made narrower.
The following day I carefully considered these observations of the comet with the hope of a possible identification of its spectrum with that of some terrestrial substance. The spectrum of the comet appeared to me to resemble some of the forms of the spectrum of carbon which I had observed and carefully measured in 1864. On comparing the
* Comet I., 1866. Proceedings, vol. xv. p. 5, and Comet 1867, Monthly Notices of Eoyal Astronomical Society, vol. xxvii. p. 288.
