2017-07-14 Fri

‘When in your middle years,
The great comet comes again.
Remember me, a child,
Awake in the summer night,
Standing in my crib and
Watching the long –haired star'
Arguably the most famous comet, it is a periodic comet that returns to earth vicinity about every 75 years. The revolution time of this comet around the sun makes it possible for a human in its lifespan to witness its return twice.

Halley's Comet gets its name for an astronomer Edmond Halley; he examined reports of the comets approaching earth in 1531, 1607 and 1682. He came to this conclusion this all comets were the same and later he predicts the comet would come again in 1758. But he didn't live to see the comet's return. But to honour his discovery, this comet was named after him.

The first known record of this Halley's Comet took place in 239 BC. The Chinese astronomer recorded its passage in the Shih Chi and Wen-Hsien Thung Khao chronicles. In 164BC and 87 BC the Babylonian recorded the return of Halley’s. But its most famous return was recorded shortly before the invasion of England by William the Conqueror. It said that Halley's Comet heralded his success. This comet was put on the Bayeux tapestry.

The appearance of this comet in 301 possibly inspired Italian painter Giotto's rendering of the star of Bethlehem in ‘The adoration the Magi'. The comet's return in 1910 was spectacular observed by Observatory and first time captured on the camera.

The last time Halley's visited near the earth's orbit in 1986. To obverse, this magnificent phenomenon of universe spacecrafts were send up to look at it.

On the Halley's Comet will visit near Earth again in 2061 and astronomers predicted it will be brighter than in 1986.

India post has issued a commemorative stamp which depicts Halley's Comet on the event of 19th General Assembly of International Astronomical Union in New Delhi for the first time.

Interesting Fact:

According to biographer Albert Bigelow Paine, the writer Mark Twain said in 1909, "I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it." Twain died on April 21, 1910, one day after perihelion, when the comet emerged from the far side of the sun.