A Brief History of Halley’s Comet

On August 26, 1682, English astronomer Edmond Halley first observed the comet named after him. From the article:

"A Brief History of Halley’s Comet
The famous comet named for astronomer Edmond Halley only passes by the Earth roughly once every 76 years, but its appearances have often played a surprising role in historical events.
For much of history, comets were thought to be divine omens, atmospheric anomalies or celestial wanderers that flashed through the solar system before vanishing into interstellar space. All that started to change in 1705, when the English astronomer Edmond Halley published his “Synopsis Astronomia Cometicae.” By using Sir Isaac Newton’s gravitational theories to chart the paths of two dozen comets, Halley hit on a provocative new theory: three comets seen in 1531, 1607 and 1682 were actually the same object. Halley argued that the comet orbited the sun and whizzed by the Earth roughly once every 76 years, and he predicted that it would reappear sometime in late 1758 or early 1759. “If it should return, according to our predictions,” he vowed, “impartial posterity will not refuse to acknowledge that this was first discovered by an Englishman.”

Edmond Halley
Edmond Halley
Halley was eventually proved correct on all counts. Although he died in 1742, his comet appeared in the sky on Christmas night of 1758, right on schedule. Its discovery was hailed as a triumph of scientific reasoning and Newtonian physics. “By its appearance at this time, the truth of the Newtonian Theory of the Solar System is demonstrated to the conviction of the whole world, and the credit of the astronomers is fully established and raised far above all the wit and sneers of ignorant men,” the British publication the Gentleman’s Magazine wrote. Shortly thereafter, the French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille named the comet in Halley’s honor.

Scientists now believe that comet 1P/Halley, as it is formally known, has been zipping through the solar system for as many as 200,000 years. Edmond Halley only identified a handful of occurrences of his comet, but other scholars have plotted its earlier appearances and uncovered historical references dating back to the ancient world. In a 2010 paper in the Journal of Cosmology, researchers Daniel W. Graham and Eric Hintz suggested that one of the earliest known sightings of Halley’s comet may have occurred around 466 B.C. in the skies over Greece. Ancient accounts of the incident mostly center on a “wagon-sized” meteorite that landed in the Hellespont, but they note that the strike was accompanied by a “huge fiery body” that was visible in the sky for 75 days. According to Graham and Hintz, the timetable matches up almost perfectly with Halley’s comet’s projected appearance in the fifth century B.C.

Giotto’s "Adoration of the Magi," which may depict Halley’s Comet. (Credit: NYPL/Science Source/Getty Images)
Giotto’s “Adoration of the Magi,” which may depict Halley’s Comet. (Credit: NYPL/Science Source/Getty Images)
While it’s possible that the comet the Greeks saw was Halley’s, more reliable accounts of its flybys didn’t appear for another few centuries. One of the most famous references is found in China in the Han Dynasty’s “Records of the Grand Historian,” which describes a “broom star” that appeared in the sky in 240 B.C. Other early sightings came from the Babylonians, who recorded the comet’s 164 B.C. and 87 B.C. transits on clay tablets; and from the Romans, who made reference to it in 12 B.C."