The first comet discovered in Yorkshire

 Edward Pigott 1753-1825 together with John Goodricke 1764-1786 were who I called the Fathers of Variable Star Astronomy when I was Curator of Astronomy at the Yorkshire Museum in York. They worked together between 1781-1786. Pigott would also make another major contribution to astronomy. He was the first person to have discovered a comet from Yorkshire.

It was on the night of November 19^th, 1783, that he observed what looked like a fuzzy patch in the constellation of Cetus the Whale. He discovered it through a telescope as it was too faint to be seen with the naked eye.

A comet is basically a dirty snowball travelling around the Sun. When it gets closer to the Sun it heats up and we are able to see a spectacular tail on the comet. At least we can with bright comets, most like comet Piggot are very faint.

Most of the important astronomers of the day confirmed the discovery. These included William Herschel who had discovered the planet Uranus in 1781, together with the important French comet hunters Charles Messier and Pierre Mechain.

During the rest of November and into December as the comet moved away from the Earth it got fainter, the last time it could be seen was December 21^st, 1783.

Comets travel around the Sun in what astronomers call elliptical or egg-shaped orbits. Orbits. With this comet only having been observed for a short time astronomers could not work out when it would return to our part of the solar system again. The comet just disappeared.

One suggestion put forward sometime later in 1860 was that the comet might have a period of around 5.89 years when it can next be seen in the sky. Although many searches were undertaken nothing was seen of comet Piggot until January 5^th, 2003, when it was seen on a photograph taken at the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research LINEAR project. This is a project run between the United States Air Force and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lincoln Laboratory. It was very faint and at first it was believed to be an asteroid. However, the photograph showed the object was fuzzy in nature meaning it was a comet. It was also thought to be in the right place where comet Piggot would be expected to be. The it was lost again.

 It was next seen on September 10th, 2009, by Richard Kowalski at the Cataline Sky Survey which is based close to the Steward Observatory Catalina Station near Tucson Arizona. It was around the same brightness as seen in 2003, still very faint. This comet has the distinction of being discovered then re discovered and the re re discovered. Astronomers now know that the comet returns to the sky and can be seen every 7.3 years. 

It was determined that this was comet Piggot but because it had been seen on three different occasions its name was to changed from comet Piggot to comet Piggot- Linear - Kowalski.

 It is also believed that the reason it was discovered by Piggot in 1783 was because the comet suffered sort of outburst and it brightened enormously, although brighter than it would normally be it still needed a telescope to see it.

If you wanted to find comet Piggot today you can find it in the constellation of Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs) a small constellation just below the handle of the famous group of stars known as the Plough. You would need a very big telescope to see it though. 

 

Quite a story for a comet that was discovered in Yorkshire

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