Morehouse, Comet

Comet Morehouse, very bright comet in a retrograde near-parabolic orbit, remarkable for variations in the form and structure of its ion, or plasma, tail. It was named after American astronomer Daniel Walter Morehouse and was observed from September 1908 to May 1909. On several occasions the ion tail appeared to break into fragments and to be completely separated from the head of the comet. Also, the ion tail became visible at twice Earth’s distance from the Sun (2 astronomical units [AU]; 300 million km, or 186 million miles), whereas most comets start to produce a visible ion tail only at about 1.5 AU (224 million km, or 139 million miles) from the Sun. Those changes in the tail are now known to be caused by the comet’s ions interacting with the solar wind. The comet’s orbital characteristics suggest that Morehouse was a “dynamically new” comet, coming straight from the Oort cloud at a great distance from the Sun.