Which of these is the name of an astronomical body that appears every 76 years?
Biela
Chiron
Encke
Halley’s comet
Answer: Halley’s comet
Halley’s Comet, also known as Comet Halley, was the first comet whose return was anticipated and the first comet that an interplanetary spacecraft was able to image up close almost three centuries later.
Edmond Halley, an English astronomer, provided the first list of the orbits of 24 comets in 1705. His calculations revealed that the comets seen in 1531, 1607, and 1682 had orbits that were strikingly similar. Halley proposed that they were really just one comet, which orbited the sun once every 76 years or so. He anticipated that comet’s arrival in 1758.
Halley died in 1742, so he did not live to see his prediction come true, but the comet was discovered in late 1758, reached perihelion (its closest point to the Sun) in March 1759, and was given his name. Because of its regular returns, it was shown to be in orbit around the Sun and, as a result, at least some comets were solar system inhabitants.
Later calculations and comparisons with comet sighting records were made for earlier Halley’s Comet passages. A comet seen in Greece between 467 and 466 BCE may have been Halley, according to some theories. However, 240 BCE is usually acknowledged as the year of its first known apparition, which Chinese astronomers saw. On April 10, 837, Halley made her closest approach to Earth at a distance of just 0.04 astronomical units.
The Bayeux Tapestry from 1066 depicts this comet, which was a sizable bright object sighted six months prior to the Norman conquest of England. The shape of the Star of Bethlehem used by Italian painter Giotto in his work, The Adoration of the Magi, which was created about 1305, may have been influenced by its passing in 1301.
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