Discovery of Biela's Comet

Biela's Comet was a periodic comet first recorded by the French astronomer Jacques Montaigne, and later independently found by Jean-Louis Pons and, most famously, by the Austrian army officer Wilhelm von Biela, whose name it carries. Biela identified it as the same comet seen in earlier decades and showed that it returned about every six and three-quarter years. At its return in 1846 it was seen to split into two parts, which then moved apart. It was last observed in 1852, and in 1872 a spectacular meteor shower occurred where the comet should have been, which was taken as evidence that it had disintegrated.

Open on the timeline