Edward Pigott and the comet that was discovered in York in 1783

This year is the 200th anniversary of the death of Edward Pigott one of the ‘Fathers of Variable Star Astronomy’ this was a title I gave him and the deaf astronomer John Goodricke who between 1781-1786 would make incredible advances in the discovery and study of the branch of astronomy we know of today as variable stars.

 Pigott was born in Whitton, west London in 1753 and died on June 27th, 1825. His life would make an incredible soap opera story, but much more of that later.

Here is another of a series of highlights from his incredible career.

Edward Pigott has the distinction so fa at least of being the only person to have discovered a comet from the City of York. He is also the first Englishman to have discovered a comet and have it named after him.

It was on November 19, 1783, when he made his discovery. It would be seen a few days later by all the great astronomers of the period including William Herschel and Charles Messier.

It was faint in the constellation of Cetus the Whale when Pigott saw the comet through the Dollond telescope in his father’s observatory in Bootham in York. Pigott described the comet looking like a small nebulous patch. It was too faint to be seen with the naked eye.

The comet was observed only observed for about a month until it became too faint to be seen.  Pigott last saw the comet on December 3^rd, 1783, and by Charles Messier on December21st. After this the comet was lost from view.

As the comet was not followed for very long and there were very few observations it was difficult to be able to say when it might be seen in the sky again. Although many searches for comet Pigott were undertaken it seemed to have simply disappeared.

To the end of his life Edward Pigott had no idea what happened top his comet. The story of his comet then jumps for the 18^th century to the 21^st century.

In January 2003, 220 years after it was first discovered that comet Pigott was re discovered.  The Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project found a ‘new’ comet with their telescopes outside of Socorro, New Mexico.   The comet was designated Comet C/2003 A1 (LINEAR) a suggestion was made that it might be a return of long-lost Comet Pigott. Unfortunately, it was not possible to make a definite link between the 2003 LINEAR comet and Pigott’s 1783 discovery.

On the night of September 10th, 2009, Rich Kowalski of the Catalina Sky Survey was surveying the sky for unknown comet and asteroids when he came across a possible new comet. You have guessed it; it was none other than Comet Pigott. When discovered in 1783 the comet was bright enough to be seen in a small telescope, today a powerful telescope is needed as the comet is very fain at around magnitude 17. Today we know that the comet has an orbital period of around 6 years.

In the 242-year period that we have known of this comet it has changed its name three times from comet Pigott to comet Pigott-LINEAR, to comet Pigott-LINEAR-Kowalski. We cannot say that of many other comets.

Edward Pigott may have been one of the Fathers of Variable Star Astronomy but he was also the first English person to have a comet named after him and the only person until now to have discovered a comet from York.

This was just another of his incredible astronomy discoveries.

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