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John Tebbutt’s Observations of Halley’s Comet in 1910

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2016

Siegfried Röser  and
Graeme L. White
Siegfried Röser
Affiliation:
Astronomisches Rechen-lnstitut, Heidelberg, West Germany
Graeme L. White
Affiliation:
Division of Radiophysics, CSIRO, Sydney
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Abstract

The Windsor amateur astronomer, John Tebbutt, had a ceased observing in 1907. However, in 1909, at the age of 75, he came out of retirement to observe Halley’s comet and his astrometric positions were published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. These data were used, together with most published observations from the 1835 and 1910 apparitions, for the computation of Halley’s orbit for ESA’s Halley intercept spacecraft, Giotto. A detailed analysis of the observations have shown minor imperfections that, when corrected, gave rms errors of 3''.5 arc in right ascension and 2''.8 in declination. His systematic errors are negligible at the 0''.2 level.

Type
Contributions
Information
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , 1986 , pp. 354 - 358
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of Australia 1986

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