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C/1843 D1
	A painting of the sungrazing Great Comet of 1843, as seen from Tasmania, by Mary Morton Allport
Discovery
Discovery date	February 5, 1843
Designations
Alternative designations	Great Comet of 1843, Great March Comet, 1843 I, 1843 D1
Orbital characteristics
Observation arc	45 days
Number of; observations	200
Orbit type	Kreutz sungrazer
Aphelion	156 AU
Perihelion	0.00553 AU (827 thousand km)
Semi-major axis	78 AU
Eccentricity	0.99993
Orbital period	600–800? yr
Max. orbital speed	566.6 km/s
Inclination	144.4°
Last perihelion	February 27, 1843
Next perihelion	unknown

The Great Comet of 1843, formally designated C/1843 D1 and 1843 I, was a long-period comet which became very bright in March 1843 (it is also known as the Great March Comet). It was discovered on February 5, 1843, and rapidly brightened to become a great comet. It was a member of the Kreutz Sungrazers, a family of comets resulting from the breakup of a parent comet (X/1106 C1) into multiple fragments in about 1106. These comets pass extremely close to the surface of the Sun—within a few solar radii—and often become very bright as a result.

Perihelion

First observed in early February, 1843, it raced toward an incredibly close perihelion of about 827,000 km (~131,000 km from the surface of the Sun) on February 27, 1843; at this time it was observed in broad daylight roughly a degree away from the Sun.^[4] It passed closest to Earth on March 6, 1843, at a distance of 0.84 AU,^[4] and was at its greatest brilliance the following day; unfortunately for observers north of the equator, at its peak it was best visible from the Southern Hemisphere.^[5] It was last observed on April 19, 1843. At that time this comet had passed closer to the Sun than any other known object.

C/1843 D1 perihelion (closest approach to the center of the Sun) on 27 February 1843^[3]
(The Sun has a radius of 696000 km)
Perihelion (Sun approach)	Earth distance (AU)	Sun centerpoint distance (AU)	Velocity relative to Earth (km/s)	Velocity relative to Sun (km/s)	Solar elongation
27 February 1843 ≈21:59	0.993 AU (148.6 million km; 92.3 million mi; 386 LD)	0.00553 AU (827 thousand km; 514 thousand mi; 2.15 LD)	552.4	566.6	0.29°

Tail

The Great Comet of 1843 developed an extremely long tail during and after its perihelion passage. At over two astronomical units in length, it was the longest known cometary tail until measurements in 1996 showed that Comet Hyakutake's tail was almost twice as long. There is a painting in the National Maritime Museum that was created by astronomer Charles Piazzi Smyth with the purpose of showing the overall brightness and size of the tail of the comet.

Orbit

Estimates for the orbital period of the comet have varied from 512 ± 105 years (Kreutz's classical work from 1901),^[2] 654 ± 103 years (Chodas2008 unforced solution),^[2] 687 years (JPL Horizons barycentric epoch 1900 solution),^[1] and 742 years (Chodas2008 forced solution based on a presumed identity with X/1106 C1).^[2] But the comet was only observed over a period of 45 days from March 5 to April 19, and the uncertainties mean it likely has an orbital period of 600 to 800 years.^[2]

Musical depiction

The Mexican composer Luis Baca composed a waltz for piano, El cometa de 1843. It appeared as no. 13 in Instructor filarmónico, periódico semanario musical, Tomo primero (Mexico, 1843)

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Horizons output. "Barycentric Osculating Orbital Elements for Great March comet (C/1843 D1) at epoch 1900". Retrieved 2023-08-29. (Solution using the Solar System's barycenter (Sun+Jupiter). Select Ephemeris Type:Elements and Center:@0)
WARNING: Orbit is probably very poorly determined
**PR= 2.51E+05 / 365.25 = 687 years**
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Sekanina, Zdenek; Chodas, Paul W. (2008). "A New Orbit Determination for Bright Sungrazing Comet of 1843". the Astrophysical Journal. 687 (2): 1415–1422. Bibcode:2008ApJ...687.1415S. doi:10.1086/592081.
^ ^a ^b "Horizons Batch for C/1843 D1 on 1843-Feb-27" (Perihelion occurs when rdot flips from negative to positive). JPL Horizons. Retrieved 2023-09-08.
^ ^a ^b Donald K. Yeomans (April 2007). "Great Comets in History". Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology (Solar System Dynamics). Retrieved 2011-02-02.
^ "Great Comets in History". Archived from the original on 2004-08-22. Retrieved 2006-02-07.