Narrator: Leonard Nimoy

Original Space Music and Sound Effects by: Goedesium

Notes by: Dr. William Gutsch, Chairman of American Museum – Hayden Planetarium 

Throughout time there have been those who faithfully watched the skies. Night after night, there was an order, a sameness to the heavens. But on occasion a change would be seen in the vault of the sky.

Sometimes a meteor would flash in fiery depths.
Sometimes the night would come alive with a flickering glow of the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights.
And sometimes there would appear a comet.

In 240 B.C. the appearance of a comet was noted in Chinese chronicles. Because of it’s distinctive shape the Chinese referred to the object as a sàobǎ xīng or Groom Star. In other cultures comet were said to resemble swords in the sky. And so it was associated with great battles.

An example is the famous Bayeux Tapestry. It commemorates the battle of Hastings in 1066 when King Harold of England was defeated by William the Conqueror. In a section of the tapestry woven a few years thereafter a comet is clearly depicted.

To others a comet foretells the birth of a great or famous person. In 1301 the Italian painter Giotto di Bondone saw a comet and later incorporated it into a fresco. In this fresco entitled “Adoration of the Magi” a comet is used to represent the Star of Bethlehem, a theory which persists amongst some until this day.

In 1835 a bright comet appeared as Egypt was swept by a plague. Some chose to blame the misfortune on the comet.

And as recently as 1910 the appearance of a comet caused thousands to believe the world would come to an end. Still, many were able to enjoy the comet for what it really was: A safe and rare cosmic spectacle.

Today we realize that all the comets seen by all of these people were really one and the same. Now, it returns again to earth skies and becomes the most carefully studied comet in history.

A few of our older listeners may remember it from its last visit, but for most this will offer the only opportunity to witness the most famous comet of all.

Halley’s Comet began its life in the frozen depths of space nearly four and a half billion years ago. It didn’t look like a comet then, instead it was merely a chunk of frozen water, other ices and dust. It was a large, dirty snowball, perhaps ten miles in diameter.

This is the heart or nucleus of a comet. To this day Halley’s Comet, indeed all comets, still look like this most of the  time. This is because in order for a comet to grow its familiar tail it must come close to the sun.
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Many comets are seen only once making a single swing in the inner solar system and back out into space. Halley’s Comet however is a repeater. 
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This most famous comet of all was named after British astronomer Sir Edmund Halley. He saw the comet himself in 1682 and being struck by its beauty used a new and powerful form of mathematics to determine the orbit of the comet. He immediately noticed that the comet he had seen shared the same orbit as a series of comets seen back through time at intervals of every 76 years or so.
He boldly concluded that they are all the same comet and furthermore predicted it would return again late in the year 1758. On Christmas day 1758 the comet reappeared and Halley was posthumously rewarded by having the object named after him.

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In 1948 Halley’s comet has again reached the farest point in its orbit, nearly 3 and a half billion miles from the sun. Now, for a few short months, it makes yet another rapid swing through the inner solar system a again appears on our skies.

To see the comet we must leave the city and travel out into the country side where lights do not interfere and skies are starry and dark.
Early January: The comet is an evening object as it approaches the sun. As twilight deepens it is found amid the stars of the constellation Aquarius its short tail pointing upward, away from the sun. Away from city lights it becomes visible for the first time to the naked eye.

From night to night the comet appears to move against the background stars, but at this time only a tiny amount.
At a distance of nearly 100 million miles these changes in position appear very small.

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(March) By the second week in March Halley’s Comet is found in the South-Eastern sky about an hour or so before dawn. It is leaving the constellation Capricorn on its way towards Sagittarius. It is outward bound away from the sun, but it draws closer to the earth.

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… not to be seen again until the year 2061.

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Telescopes and instruments undreamed of in 1910 will probe the nature of the comet like never before.

With comets astronomers take on the role of cosmic astrologists as they study an object which has remained virtually unchanged since the dawn of creation, an object whose chemistry may yield vital clues to the origin of our solar system and even life on earth itself. The earth and its neighbouring planet have evolved tremendously in four and a half billion years. Comets that spend most of their days in the icy solar system remain virtually unchanged, and so comets offer unique opportunities to look far back into the past.

But there is more to the excitement than simply having bigger and better scientific instruments than in 1910. It comes down to where we or our instruments now travel to study a comet.
 

(Noises and voices are heard)

From high above the earth’s obscuring atmosphere astronomer astronauts turn America’s space shuttle into a unique cosmic observatory. In addition Japan and the Soviet Union are each sending unmanned space crafts to rendezvous with the comet. They will study the chemical make up of the comet’s coma and tail. The Russian craft is expected to send the first close up images of this visitor from the depths of space. Most daring of all the European Space Agency will send their probe called Giotto on a mission into the very heart of the comet. The goal: To obtain detailed photos of the nucleus itself.

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Halley’s Comet: Whether you are a hobby scientist seeking the unique opportunity to learn more of nature’s secrets or a first time sky watcher, it’s bound to be an experience you’ll remember for the rest of your life. And for most of us an experience that comes once in a lifetime.