manasataramgini
manasataramgini

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4 Tweets Feb 13, 2023
Got a fairly good view of the tail of C/2022 E3 (ZTF): it was in almost what the H of yore would have called a ketu-grahayuddha with ma~Ngala. Its eccentricity is very nearly 1: about as close to a parabola of the comets I've seen in my life so far.
One of the character flaws of the later day H was the loss of interest in comets. Early H astronomers in contrast had considerable interest in comets. nArada had a weird theory that all comets were the same one reappearing again & again. Not sure if this was some vague
knowledge of Halley's comet or just a strange theory. This comet does seem to have a greenish hue; hence, the old H would have called it an agni-putra-ketu. The H omina et portenta believed that some comets presaged great good& others bad. One of this type was said to bring fear
& cause death of the lord of the shUrasena-s. I does seem that the old H clearly understood comets as celestial & reflecting light unlike the Aristotelian physics were they were described as atmospheric objects until Geminiano Montanari showed otherwise:
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