Dirk wrote: "The comet was most likely Comet 1859(1) - Comet Temple1."
Sean wrote: "Is it possible that they were not actually speaking of a meteor/ meteorite, but referencing the Wilhelm Tempel 1859 comet?" Hello Dirk, Sean, and List, Not quite sure whether Comet 1859 and Comet Tempel 1 are identical. Wilhelm Tempel discovered Tempel 1 on the night of April 3, 1867 and as the comet's period is about six years, its previous apparition must have been 1861, not 1859. He did discover a comet in 1859, the only one that year. So, like Sean, I think that Walt Whitman may have thought of Comet 1859 but somehow intermingled the spectacular Leonid meteor shower (whose parent comet is 55P/ *T e m p e l* -Tuttle) and Comet 1859. I don't even think that Walt was thinking of Comet 1859 because it was quite unspectacular. What about Comet Donati or Biela or even Halley? A case of "poetic license" ? ... Maybe Best, Bernd ______________________________________________ http://www.meteoritecentral.com Meteorite-list mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
