Gottfried Kirch discovered the 'Great Comet of 1680' on this day in 1680

On this day November 14, a comet, known as the Kirch's Comet or the Great Comet of 1680-1681 A.D, C/1680 V1 was discovered.  Like the comet ISON, the Comet Kirch was one of the brightest spotted that approached fast towards the sun and disintegrated. The comet was first observed by the German astronomer, Gottfried Kirch in the seventeenth century as it trailed towards the sun in close perihelion. The bright object was spotted in the sky by a group of sungazers --  Kreutz group in Rotterdam, Netherlands. However, Kirch became the first person to discover the comet using a telescope. 

Going by the cometary trajectory, the object was first identified as two separate comets in late 1680 and early 1681. However, the comet reached its brilliance with its tail extended 70 degrees, coming further closer to the sun covering the sixteenth part of its diameter at only about 540,000 miles. Comet orbited the sun at the speed of 1,200,000 miles an hour, and its long tail was depicted in a painting by Lieve Versheier. The Kirch's comet lit up the night-time skies, and was even briefly visible in broad daylight according to NASA, and had a remarkably similar orbit to that of Comet ISON. The C/1680 V1 (Kirch), was also known as Newton’s comet as it became the first comet to be discovered via a telescope. 

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[In 1680, Kirch's comet lit up the nighttime skies and was even briefly visible in broad daylight with a remarkably similar orbit to that of Comet ISON. Credit: NASA]

Longitude of ascending node

“C/1680 V1 passed just 0.42AU (~62-million kilometers, or ~39-million miles) from Earth, and just a couple of weeks after that, on Dec 18, 1680, grazed a mere 0.006AU (~900,000km, 550,000miles) from the Sun,” according to a report by Science daily Journal. Unlike the comet ISON, Kirch brightened its thin arcing tail as it raced closer to the sun, but the objects shared "longitude of the ascending node”. Kirch comet stood at 277-degrees while the distance from the sun for  ISON was 295-degrees. For a long, scientists assumed ISON would meet the same fate as Kirch that disintegrated into space.  

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