The Great Comet of 1843 - 1^st March 1843 - 8^th April, 1843

            For five weeks from the beginning of March, 1843, a comet of extraordinary length and brightness lit up the evening sky across the southern hemisphere. Not surprisingly, it was mentioned in several diaries and journals of the time.

            From his camp near Tairua, on the east coast of the Coromandel peninsula, William Jeffrey of H.M.S.Tortoise recorded on the 4^th March that ‘For the last 3 nights there has been a very extraordinary streak of light just above the hills in the southwest quarter of the heavens. It is like the tail of a very large comet, but we cannot see its end for the hills”. By the 8^th he writes “…The comet is still to be seen - it is a glorious sight. It appears to be advancing to the northward in the heavens. I wonder if it is visible in England…” By April 8^th he remarks in passing that “…The comet has quite disappeared, having been in sight 5 weeks…”.

            Edward J. Wakefield, in his book ‘Adventure in New Zealand from 1839 to 1844’[1]  records his recollections of the event; “I was at Otaki on the 4^th March, when the splendid comet of 1843 was first seen in the SW. The first night some natives rushed into the house to ask for explanation of the extraordinary sight. After watching it for some hours, I foretold that it would be seen again for many nights; which they would not believe, telling me that I was porangi, or “foolish”, to think that the atua, or “spirit,” would appear when I liked. And I was much laughed at till the next night, when there it was still! It was seen for nearly a month; and the clearness of the atmosphere added to its beautiful appearance. The nucleus was distinctly visible, like a small star; and the tail, of uncommon brilliancy, subtended an angle of 36° as observed from Wellington, and of 45° as observed from Wanganui.”

            Captain Thomas Wing, had his view of the comet reported in the Launceston Examiner newspaper, having observed it from Port Louis in the Indian ocean island of Mauritius while commanding the Deborah. “The Comet…..was first perceived at Port Louis on Wednesday afternoon the 1^st of March, immediately after sundown: and as it had so lately emerged from the sun, it presented a most brilliant and impressive spectacle, the nucleus itself exceedingly bright, with a beautiful tail of almost incalculable length.”[2]

            The comet was brighter and longer than had been seen during the previous seven centuries and in later years came to be known as ‘The Great Comet of 1843’. It was first noticed in Europe in early February, three weeks before it rounded the sun[3]. It was one of a family of comets known to astronomers as the Kreutz Sungrazers that resulted from the fragmentation of a parent comet in the year 1106. The fragments are known to pass extremely close to the sun and it is this behaviour that results in their spectacular brightness and tail length.

            By the end of February it could be seen across 50 degrees of the sky in daytime. Its tail was calculated to be 300 million miles long. After its passage around the sun, and while at its brightest in early March, it could only be seen from the southern hemisphere. It continued to diminish throughout that month, becoming hardly noticeable to the naked eye by early in April.

The great British astronomer Charles Piazzi Smythe observed the comet from the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, and left a remarkable painting of it to posterity.         Smythe described its nucleus as ‘a planetary disc, from which rays emerged in the direction of the tail', and observed that to the naked eye it appeared to have a double tail, with the two streamers proceeding from the head in perfectly straight lines.

Don Armitage ©