Biela's Comet

3D/Biela

Biela's Comet in February 1846, soon after it split into two pieces
Discovery
Discovered by	Wilhelm von Biela
Discovery date	February 27, 1826
Alternative designations	1772; 1806 I; 1832 III; 1846 II; 1852 III; 1826 D1
Orbital characteristics A
Epoch	September 29, 1852
Aphelion	6.190 AU
Perihelion	0.8606 AU
Semi-major axis	3.5253 AU
Eccentricity	0.7559
Orbital period	6.619 a
Inclination	12.550°
TJupiter	2.531
Last perihelion	September 24, 1852
Next perihelion	Disintegrated in 1852

Biela's Comet or Comet Biela (official designation: 3D/Biela) was a periodic Jupiter-family comet first recorded in 1772 by Montaigne and Messier and finally identified as periodic in 1826 by Wilhelm von Biela. It was subsequently observed to split in two and has not been seen since 1852. As a result it is currently considered to have been destroyed, although remnants appeared to have survived for some time as a meteor shower, the Andromedids.

The comet was first recorded on 8 March 1772 by Jacques Leibax Montaigne; during the same apparition it was independently discovered by Charles Messier. It was also recorded in 1805 by Jean-Louis Pons, but was not recognized as the same object. After the 1805 apparition a number of attempts were made by Gauss (1806) and Bessel (1806) to calculate a definitive orbit, Gauss and Olbers both noting a similarity between the 1805 and 1772 comets, but it was not possible to prove a link.

It was Wilhelm von Biela, an army officer serving at the fortress town of Josefstadt, who observed the comet during its 1826 perihelion approach (on February 27) and calculated its orbit, discovering it to be periodic with a period of 6.6 years. At the time it was only the third comet known to be periodic, after comets Halley and Encke. The comet was named after Biela, although there was initially some controversy due to a later but independent discovery by Jean-Félix Adolphe Gambart, who also provided the first mathematical proof linking the 1826 and 1805 comets (letters from Biela and Gambart were published in the same issue of the Astronomische Nachrichten). A third claim was made by Thomas Clausen, who had independently linked the comets.