Comet Morehouse

C/1908 R1 (Morehouse)

Picture from a 1908 postcard.
Discovery
Discovered by	Daniel W. Morehouse
Discovery site	Yerkes Observatory
Discovery date	1 September 1908
Designations
Alternative designations	1908c 1908 III
Orbital characteristics
Epoch	30 October 1908 (JD 2418244.5)
Observation arc	88 days
Number of observations	137
Perihelion	0.945 AU
Semi-major axis	–1,058.049 AU
Eccentricity	1.00073
Inclination	140.174°
Longitude of ascending node	104.459°
Argument of periapsis	171.584°
Last perihelion	26 December 1908
Earth MOID	0.0668 AU
Jupiter MOID	2.3183 AU

Comet Morehouse (modern formal designation: C/1908 R1) was a bright, non-periodic comet discovered by US astronomer Daniel Walter Morehouse and first observed on September 1, 1908 (the discovery photograph was taken on September 1, but the comet was not noticed until the following day), at Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. Morehouse was a graduate student at the time. It was unusual in the rapid variations seen in the structure of its tail. At times, the tail seemed to split into up to six separate tails; at others, the tail appeared completely detached from the head of the comet. The tail was further unusual in that it formed while the comet was still 2 AU away from the Sun (where distances of 1.5 AU are more usual), and that there was a high concentration of the CO⁺ ion in its spectrum.

As is typical for comets fresh from the Oort Cloud, its orbital solution is more or less parabolic; if its orbit is in fact closed, it will likely not return for millions of years.

External links

• Media related to Comet Morehouse at Wikimedia Commons
• Photographs of Comet Morehouse from the Lick Observatory Records Digital Archive, UC Santa Cruz Library's Digital Collections Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine
• Morehouse at the JPL Small-Body Database