A little ramble through 19th century astronomy - Comet Coggia in 1874

 Academy Newspaper Saturday 19^th December 1874 search word comet 

The Tail of Coggia's Comet.

Mr. Cleveland Abbe, of Washington, has communicated to the Astronomische Nachrichten a series of careful observations of the tail of Coggia’s comet, extending from June 18 to July 22 1874, the positions and breadths of sections at different distances from the head being given, as well as the length. These positions and the careful notes which accompany them will give the means of deciding several interesting questions—such as, whether the tail pointed directly away from the sun; how much it was curved; and whether this curvature changed—matters which have a very important bearing on the question of the physical nature of comets,

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