Halley’s Comet Through History

240 BCE O.S. – 206138 items

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“Isti mirant stella”: men marvel at the comet of 1066, from the Bayeux Tapestry, 1070s. Photo: Myrabella. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
“Isti mirant stella”: men marvel at the comet of 1066, from the Bayeux Tapestry, 1070s. Photo: Myrabella. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

One comet, thirty-one visits

Every 76 years or so the same comet swings in from beyond Neptune, rounds the Sun and heads out again. People have been writing it down since 240 BCE: Qin court astronomers, Babylonian scribes, an old monk in Wiltshire, the embroiderers of the Bayeux Tapestry, Giotto. For almost two thousand years nobody knew it was one object. Then Edmond Halley did the sums.

Hence I dare venture to foretell, That it will return again in the Year 1758. — Edmond Halley, A Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets, 1705

How it is laid out

  • A portent in the sky: every return before anyone knew it was a return.

  • Waiting for the return: 1682 to Christmas night 1758, the test of Halley’s prediction.

  • Mark Twain, comet to comet: a life that began and ended with the comet.

  • The Halley Armada: five spacecraft in nine days of March 1986.

  • Heading out and Coming home: its orbit since 1986, out to 2023 and back to 28 July 2061.

Dates

Dates before the Gregorian reform of 1582 are in the Julian calendar, the one the chroniclers used; later dates are Gregorian. The app shows every date in both calendars, so each medieval sighting also appears with its Gregorian equivalent. A return with no dated sighting is placed at its computed perihelion, from Yeomans and Kiang’s 1981 orbit.

Follow a thread with the tags omens, eyewitness, art, prediction and instruments, or china for the longest run of records.

Items

  1. A portent in the sky

    ≈ 1,921 years

  2. Qin astronomers log a “broom star”

    Xianyang, capital of the state of Qin

  3. Babylon’s astronomers write it down

    Babylon

  4. A comet hangs over Rome

    Rome

  5. A sword-shaped star over Jerusalem?

    Jerusalem

  6. The closest pass

    Chang’an (Xi’an), capital of the Tang

  7. “Such a token” over all England

    Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire

  8. The Bayeux Tapestry: “Isti mirant stella”

    Bayeux Cathedral, Normandy

  9. A comet in the Eadwine Psalter

    Christ Church, Canterbury

  10. Giotto paints the Star of Bethlehem as a comet

    Scrovegni Chapel, Padua

  11. Toscanelli tracks the comet across the stars

    Florence

  12. Calixtus III and the comet: a legend grows

    Rome

  13. Apian sees the tail point away from the Sun

    Ingolstadt, Bavaria

  14. Kepler watches from Prague

    Prague

  15. Waiting for the return

    ≈ 76 years

  16. Halley watches the comet of 1682

    Islington

  17. Halley predicts a return in 1758

  18. Halley dies at Greenwich

    Greenwich

  19. Clairaut adds Jupiter and Saturn

    Académie royale des sciences, the Louvre, Paris

  20. Palitzsch finds it on Christmas night

    Prohlis, near Dresden

  21. Messier finds it, a month late

    Hôtel de Cluny, Paris

  22. The first predicted return

  23. John Herschel follows it from the Cape

    7 months, 3 days · Feldhausen, Claremont, Cape Town

  24. Mark Twain, comet to comet

    ≈ 74 years

  25. Max Wolf spots the returning comet

    Königstuhl Observatory, Heidelberg

  26. Mark Twain goes out with it

    Stormfield, Redding, Connecticut

  27. Earth passes through the tail

  28. Recovered beyond Saturn

    Hale Telescope, Palomar Observatory

  29. Heading out

    ≈ 37 years, 10 months

  30. The Halley Armada

    8 days

  31. Vega 1 meets the comet

  32. Suisei and Sakigake

  33. Vega 2 meets the comet

  34. Giotto flies into Halley’s Comet

  35. The faintest comet ever seen

    Very Large Telescope, Cerro Paranal

  36. Coming home

    ≈ 37 years, 7 months

  37. Aphelion: the comet turns for home

  38. The next perihelion