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Period AD 1782 — 1801 New Comets Found 25 Average per year 1.25 1802 - 1821 1822 — 1841 1842 — 1861 1862 — 1881 1882 — 1889 26 36 83 79 40 1.30 1.80 4.15 3.95 5.00 There is a hint, of the added activity which we have suspected for 1845-55. Astronomer Barnard tabulated the comets discovered for 1876-86 and published the results in 1886, almost as though he felt, even then, that something abnormal was going on. 1876... 1877... 1878... 1882... 1883... 1884... 1879...5 1880...5 1881...8 1885...6 1886 ...3 (first seven months) The peak at 1877-81 is very noticeable, without taking into consideration the number and size of the naked eye comets of mid-decade. What with comets, red spots, Hyginus N, will-o-the-wisps like Harrison's lights on the moon, and objects crossing the sun, the decade of the 1880's was, for certain, ushered in with a blaze of celestial glory, and it ended with a fanfare of puzzles. The light of comets has been seen to fluctuate in rather remarkable manners. This was especially true of Pon's comet during its return in 1883-84, at which time it manifested the spirit of the times and presented some eccentric behavior. Its brilliance, for example, increased thirty-forty-fold above that explainable from merely becoming closer to the sun. In addition there were hour-to-hour fluctuations of one hundred percent and more, and concomitantly the nucleus experienced some tortuous changes in shape and structure, as such as we will note again in the great comets of 1881 and 1882. In the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, there is detailed description of all of the six comets of 1880, and there is added the following: In addition to the six comets, an object was observed by Mr. Swift, of Rochester, New York, on April 11, 1880 in the constellation Ursa Major (Big Dipper) in RA 11h 28m and Declination 68°, and supposed by him to be a faint comet. However, no motion was detected in one hour. It was not a nebula for it could not be found again after a period of bad weather. Like Harrison's object, this was farther north than usual for a comet and quite far from the sun. If a comet, it should have manifest motion in an hour. The fact that it did not, yet moved away later, is indicative of controlled motion. Its stationary position suggests hovering. Meteors came in for their share of attention during these years. The Royal Astronomical Society had a committee which assembled meteor data for a long period of years, and published it regularly as a part of the permanent records of the Society. Many of these meteors were of remarkable characteristics. For instance, in the Monthly Notices of December 1880, W.F. Denning describes a very "slow" meteor which took fifteen to twenty seconds to cross the sky and mentions a "stationary" meteor which seemed to be approaching the observer in a sinuous track. There are many references to unusual meteors during 153 Study the following table of comet discoveries: The score for "The Decade" is as follows: