Part 5

The Comet appeared early in the year and was seen over Germany, as noted in the chronicles of the monks of St. Gallus in Switzerland. Immediately after the appearance of the Comet, Germany was ravaged by war, both inside and outside, the Empire being invaded on all sides by the Danes in the North, the Slavs in the Northeast, and the Magyars from Hungary.

837

The Chinese Astronomers record two Comets for this year, one in February, and the other in April. But the modern view is that this was the same Comet, as seen going to the Sun, and afterward, when it was coming away from the Sun.

Immediately after the appearance of the Comet there followed a widespread rebellion in China with much bloodshed and fierce reprisals.

The only Christian record of the Comet we have is that of Eginard, an astrologer employed at the Court of Louis the Debonair, in France. This is Eginard’s account of the Comet: “In the midst of the holy festival of Easter there shone forth in our sky a sign always ominous and of sad foreboding. As soon as the Emperor—who was in the habit of gazing up into the sky at night—first saw the Comet, he had me called before him, together with another learned star gazer. As soon as I came before him he asked me what I thought of the sign in heaven.”

“‘Let me have but a little time,’ I asked of him, ‘that I may study this sign and see the exact constellation of the other stars around it, thus to gather from the stars the true meaning of this portent,’ promising him that I would tell him on the morrow of the results of my studies.

“But the Emperor, guessing that I was trying to gain time—as was indeed the truth, lest I be driven to tell him something unlucky and fatal to him—he said to me:

“‘Go up on the terrace of the palace and look. Then come back at once and tell me what thou hast seen! For I did not see this star last night; nor didst thou point it out to me; but I know that sign in heaven is a Comet. Thou must tell me true what it forebodes to me!’

“Then, before I could say anything, he said: ‘There is another thing thou art hiding from me. It is that changes in Kingdoms and the deaths of rulers are foretold by this sign.’

“To soothe him I reminded the Emperor of the words of the Prophet Isaiah, who said: ‘Fear not signs in the Heaven, like unto the Heathen.’

“But the Emperor smiled sadly and said: ‘We should believe only in God on High, who has created us and also all Stars in Heaven. Since He has sent this Star, and since this unlooked for Sign may be meant for us, let us look upon it as a warning from Heaven.’”

Thereupon Louis the Debonair betook himself to fasting, prayers, and the building of churches and shrines, he and all his Court. Shortly thereafter he died.

The French chronicler, Raoul Glaber, afterward wrote in his chronicle: “Comets never show themselves to man without foreboding surely some coming event, marvellous or terrible.”

760

A Comet appeared in the Spring of this year, which without any doubt whatever was Halley’s. It was recorded in detail both by European and Chinese annalists, and its orbit has been calculated and identified by Laugier.

A Greek record of Constantinople tells how “a Comet like a great beam” and very brilliant was observed in the twentieth year of Emperor Constantine V., surnamed Copronymus, first in the East and then in the West, for about thirty days. Its appearance was followed next Winter by a biting frost throughout the Orient, which endured 150 days, from October until February, blighting all crops in Egypt and elsewhere in the Eastern Empire.

684

Chinese annals record a Comet observed in the West in September and October. This accords with the computed time for the course of Halley’s Comet that year. Immediately after the Comet’s appearance, China and the Far East were ravaged by the black plague. Millions died of it. Baeda the Venerable, in his “Chronicle of the English People,” records that the plague also reached England.

607

All Europe and the former Roman Empire were in such dire confusion during this period that no records of this year, either astronomic or historical, have come down to us. Messrs. Cowell and Crommelin, however, have computed astronomically that the Comet must have appeared during this year. All we know is that Italy and the Latin World were overrun by ravaging Slavonian hordes from Hungary, who made all the country run with blood.

530

Of the Comet this year, likewise, there is no astronomic record. All we know is that the appearance of a Comet is noted in European chronicles. It was followed by a virulent outbreak of the black plague.

In the legendary history of Merlin, the ancient British seer, it is stated that on the appearance of a Comet this year he prophesied that Uter, brother of Ambrosius, on the death of the latter, should rule the kingdom; that a ray from the Comet which pointed toward Gaul presaged a son who should be born to him and who should be great in power; and that the ray “that goes toward Ireland represents a daughter, of whom thou shalt be the father, and her sons and grandsons shall reign over all the Britons.” These prophecies all came true.

451

The Comet which appeared over Europe this year has been proven by Laugier to have been Halley’s Comet.

It was seen in France just before the monster battle on the Catalaunian Fields (Châlons-sur-Marne), when Aetius, the last of the Romans, together with King Theoderic and his Goths, stemmed the tide of Hunnish invasion led by Attila, the “Scourge of God.”

Theoderic, together with 148,000 warriors on both sides, were slain in this tremendous fight, which alone saved Europe from Tartar savagery.

373

Chinese annals of this year record a Comet seen in the northern constellation of Ophiuchus in October. This year marks the beginning of the tremendous migration of peoples, which started in Mongolia and Tartary, and crossing the Volga gradually overflowed all the known world, like a huge human deluge.

295

The appearance of a Comet this year (identified by Hind with Halley’s) was followed by a bloody rebellion of the ancient Britons against the Romans, and by another rebellion against Rome by the Egyptians. These patriotic uprisings of the people were suppressed with fire and sword and both countries ran with blood.

218

The Chinese catalogue of Ma-tuan-lin records a Comet with a path exactly analogous with the orbit of Halley’s Comet computed for that year by Hind. In the Chinese record the Comet is described as “pointed and bright.” Its coming was connected with the death of Emperor Ween-te directly afterward, and the Civil Wars between various claimants to the throne of the Celestial Empire, which then rent China asunder.

Dion Cassius, the Roman historian, describes the Comet of this year as “a very fearful star with a tail stretching from the West towards the East.”

The Roman augurs explained the Comet as a portent of the bloody death of Emperor Macrinus of Rome, who was murdered by his own soldiers on the night after the disappearance of the Comet.

141

In this year the Chinese astronomers recorded a Comet in March and April (the time computed for Halley’s Comet), which they described as “a star six or seven cubits long and of a bluish-white colour.” The coming of the Comet was followed by a virulent outbreak of the plague in China and the Far East, which spread all over the known world. So virulent was this pestilence that in the City of Naples alone 400,000 people died of the disease.

65-66

Halley’s Comet, according to astronomic calculations, must have made its reappearance during the winter months of 65-66 A. D. The Chinese have recorded “two Comets,” one in 65, which was seen for fifty-six days, and “the other” in February, 66, which remained visible fifty days.

This was the Comet which St. Peter and Josephus saw over the City of Jerusalem, before the fall of the Holy City. Josephus wrote of it: “Amongst other warnings, a Comet, of the kind called Xiphias, because their tails appear to represent the blade of a sword, was seen above the doomed city for the space of nearly a whole year.”

Jerusalem was ravaged by pestilence and famine and soon afterward was stormed by the Roman soldiery led by Titus. The Temple was burned down and the streets of the Holy City ran with blood. It was the end of Jerusalem and of the Jews as a free city and people.

B. C. 11

This is the farthest back that the appearances of Halley’s Comet have been traced in history. For earlier appearances there are no sufficiently trustworthy computations or records.

Dion Cassius in his “History of Rome” has recorded “a Comet which hung suspended over the City of Rome just before the death of Agrippa,” who ruled over the Roman Empire during the absence of Augustus in Greece and Asia. Agrippa was so universally beloved, and his death was held to be such a loss to Rome that he was buried with imperial honours in the tomb intended for Augustus.

The death of Agrippa occurred in the year 12, shortly after the disappearance of the Comet which Hind has identified with Halley’s.

* * * * *

This completes the record of all the known appearances of Halley’s Comet. The record fully justifies Chambers’ dictum, that the “Comet known as Halley’s is by far the most interesting of all the Comets recorded in history.”

This historic record also appears to justify in no small measure the popular beliefs of the last two thousand years concerning Comets, as expressed by Leonard Digges in his book on Prognostics, published 350 years ago:

“Cometes signifie corruption of the ayre. They are signs of earthquakes, of warres, of changying of Kyngdomes, great dearth of food, yea a common death of man and beast from pestilence.”

THE STORY OF EDMUND HALLEY

The great French astronomer Lalande considered Halley the greatest astronomer of his time. This opinion is still held. Halley’s “time” means the age of Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, Flamsteed, Hevelius, and Leibnitz, all of whom achieved first rank in Astronomy.

Halley’s greatest achievement in Astronomy was the discovery that our solar system was but an atom in immeasurable space whence wandering stars could be caught within the influence of our Sun, our Earth and the other Planets swinging around our Sun.

Halley was the first to discover and to prove that the Comets that come within the vision of man have fixed periods of return. He made this discovery during the appearance of the great Comet of 1682, which has since been known by his name.

In his studies of the motions of Comets, of which Halley computed the orbits of twenty-four, he observed that a Comet of similar phenomena, recorded by Appian in 1531 and by Kepler in 1607, had swung through the same orbit as the Comet under his observation in 1682. Halley surmised from this that these Comets might be one and the same, whose intervals of return appeared to cover a period of seventy-five or seventy-six years. Halley’s surmise seemed to be confirmed by the recorded appearance of similar bright Comets in the years 1456, 1378, and 1301, the intervals again being seventy-five or seventy-six years.

Halley was deeply imbued with Newton’s new discovery of gravitation, for the publication of which Halley paid the expenses, so he brought the principles of Newton’s theory of gravitation to bear on his own new theory of the motions of Comets. He rightly conjectured that Comets were drawn to our Sun across the disturbing orbits of our planetary system, and that the comparatively small differences of one or two years in the recorded intervals of this one Comet (Halley’s Comet) were due to the attraction of the larger planets.

During the previous year, 1681, Halley computed that the Comet had passed near the planet Jupiter, the attraction of which must have had a considerable influence on the Comet’s motion. Making due allowance for this disturbing influence of Jupiter, he computed that the Comet would return to the vicinity of our Sun about the end of 1758 or beginning of 1759.

Halley did not live to see his prediction fulfilled (he died in 1742), but he wrote shortly before he died: “If this Comet should return according to our predictions about the year 1758, impartial posterity will not refuse to acknowledge that this was first discovered by an Englishman.”

All through the year 1758 the most noted astronomers of Europe were on the lookout for the return of the predicted Comet. One of these astronomers, Messier, looked for it through his telescope at the Paris Observatory every night from sunset to sunrise throughout that whole year. On Christmas night, 1758, the Comet was first seen by a German peasant near Dresden, who had heard about the Comet and was looking for it. He was a man of unusually good eyesight, yet his discovery was doubted until Messier, nearly a month afterward, at Paris, “picked up” the Comet with his telescope.

From that time forth this Comet, which returned in 1835, and is reappearing in this year (1910), has been known as Halley’s Comet.

[Illustration: EDMUND HALLEY.]

Besides this achievement, Halley accomplished many other noteworthy feats in astronomy, such as his discovery of the proper motions of the fixed stars; his detection of the “long inequality” of Jupiter and Saturn, and of the acceleration of the moon’s mean motion; his theory of variation, including the hypothesis of various magnetic poles, with his suggestion of the magnetic origin of the aurora borealis; and his indication of a method still used for determining the solar parallax by means of the transits of Venus.

On the strength of these achievements, Halley for many years was elected to serve as secretary to the Royal Society. Commissioned as a Captain in the Royal Navy, he also commanded a vessel on a long cruise of exploration, and late in life he was made Astronomer Royal.

Although in his sixty-fourth year, he then undertook to observe the moon through an entire revolution of her nodes (eighteen years), and actually carried out his purpose. To appreciate the full significance of so painstaking an achievement it should be borne in mind that astronomical observations must be made in a temperature equal to that of the open air. Observatories cannot be heated because the heat would impair the accuracy of the instruments.

Great astronomers, like poets, are born, not made. Edmund Halley was one of these. At the age of seventeen he had already observed the change in the variations of the compass. At nineteen he was recognized as an astronomer of reputation, having supplied a new and improved method of determining the elements of the planetary orbits. His detection of considerable errors in the tables then in use led him to the conclusion that a more accurate determination of the places of the fixed Stars was indispensable to the progress of astronomy. With this end in view he set out on a voyage to the other side of the globe, St. Helena, where he undertook the task of making complete new observations of the entire Southern Hemisphere. Though the Heavens proved clouded he succeeded within two years in registering three hundred and sixty stars, a colossal achievement which won for him the title of the “Southern Tycho.” This was when Halley was barely of age.

(The famous astronomer Tycho Brahe, long before this had won his fame by mapping the stars of the Northern Heavens.)

No one could well have begun with prospects more remote from so high a career, for Edmund Halley was born in 1656, the son of a soap boiler in a shabby London suburb. From the refuse of rancid fat and lye the boy was rescued by friends, who procured for him a scholarship at Saint Paul’s school. By his brilliant attainments in mathematics he won another scholarship to Oxford University.

While at Oxford the youth published a treatise on the planetary orbits and argued the Sun’s axial rotation.

On his graduation from Oxford, the young would-be astronomer conceived the project of turning his attention to the southern Stars, of which no good observations had been made. Shortly before this time a Dutch astronomer, named Houtman, had observed these Stars in the island of Sumatra; and Blaeu, the best globe maker of the age, had used these new observations in the correction of his celestial globes. Halley, on examining these corrections, came to the conclusion that he himself could do better. He also concluded that the Island of St. Helena might be a better point for southern observations. His father, unable to pay the expenses of so long a trip, broached the project to some friends. The young astronomer was recommended to King Charles II. by Williamson and Jones Moore, and the King in turn recommended the youth to the Indian Company, which then had control over the island of St. Helena.

After this all was plain sailing. The India Company placed a ship at his disposition and promised him all the assistance he required. Young Halley provided himself with telescopes, and micrometers, and other instruments of the latest approved pattern. In November, 1666, at the age of twenty, he sailed for St. Helena. Among his luggage was a sextant of five and a half feet and a telescope twenty-four feet in length constructed under the supervision of Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal.

Halley was disappointed in the climate of St. Helena. Frequent rains and a constantly hazy sky scarcely permitted any observations in the months of August and September. Notwithstanding these difficulties, he succeeded in observing and cataloguing some 360 Stars.

In addition to his work on the Stars, Halley made some investigations on the Moon’s parallax, combining his observations at St. Helena with those made in northern skies. He also evolved a new theory of the Moon’s motion, which proved of great aid in the determination of longitudes.

On November 7, 1677, Halley observed a transit of Mercury which suggested to him the important idea of employing similar phenomena for the calculation of the Sun’s distance.

Halley returned to England in November, 1678, and was hailed by his fellow astronomers as the “Southern Tycho.” He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and by the King’s command the degree of Master of Arts was conferred upon him by the University of Oxford.

Six months later Halley set out for Dantsic for a personal conference with Hevelius, the Polish astronomer. Halley wanted to satisfy himself as to the accuracy of observations claimed by Hevelius without the aid of a telescope. Halley convinced himself that the errors of the observations made by Hevelius were less than had been supposed, and did not exceed a minute of an arc. The two became life-long friends. Halley proceeded to other cities of Europe where there were observatories. In Paris he observed with Cassini the great Comet of 1680. This was the beginning of Halley’s special study of Comets.

Returning to England, the young astronomer married the daughter of Mr. Tooke, auditor of the Exchequer, with whom he lived harmoniously until her death, fifty-five years later. The young couple settled at Islington, where Halley erected an observatory of his own and engaged in constant lunar observations with a view toward finding a method for computing longitudes at sea.

Halley’s mind at the same time was busy with the momentous problem of gravity, upon which Isaac Newton was working then. Independently of Newton, Halley reached the conclusion that the central force of the Solar System must decrease inversely as the square of the distance. Having applied vainly to his fellow astronomers, Hooke and Wren, Halley in August, 1684, made a special journey to Cambridge to consult Isaac Newton, who confirmed his conjectures.

Halley and Newton became life-long friends. Halley had Newton elected to the Royal Society, and when Newton became too poor to pay his quarterly dues, Halley, through his influence with the leading members of the Society, had them remitted. It was Halley who encouraged Newton to put his momentous discovery and elucidation of the forces of gravity into permanent form in his “Principia,” the first volume of which, “De Motu,” was presented to the Royal Society at Halley’s suggestion.

In the proceedings of the Royal Society for December, 1684, there is an entry that “Mr. Halley had lately seen Mr. Newton at Cambridge, who had told him of a curious treatise ‘De Motu,’ which at Mr. Halley’s desire he promised to send to the Society to be entered upon their register. Mr. Halley was desired to put Mr. Newton in mind of his promise for the securing this invention to himself, till such time as he could be at leisure to publish it.”

Early in the following year Newton sent his treatise to the Society, to whom it was read aloud by Halley. This treatise “De Motu” was the germ of the “Principia” and was intended to be a short account of what the greater work was to embrace.

During the next two years Newton was hard at work on his “Principia,” while Halley was equally hard at work on his computations of the Comet of 1682, and on his theory of the orbits and the periodical returns of Comets which grew out of his observations.

On April 21, 1686, Halley read to the Royal Society his own “Discourse Concerning Gravity and its Properties,” in which he stated that his “worthy countryman, Mr. Issac Newton, has an incomparable treatise on Motion almost ready for the press,” and that the law of the inverse square “is the principle on which Mr. Newton has made out all the phenomena of the celestial motions so easily and naturally that its truth is past dispute.”

Shortly afterward Newton sent in the manuscript of his great work. The Society voted “that a letter of thanks be written to Mr. Newton and that the printing of his book be referred to the consideration of the council and that in the meantime the book be put into the hands of Mr. Halley.”

The truth was that the Royal Society, at that time, did not have money enough to print the book. The Society went through the empty form of “ordering” that the book be printed “forthwith,” but no printer was forthcoming until Halley himself undertook the publication of the great work at his own expense.

The delicacy of Halley’s feeling is revealed by his correspondence with Newton, in which he informed Newton that the book had “been ordered to be printed at the Society’s charge.” The preliminary delay about printing he explained to Newton “arose from the President’s attendance on the King, and the absence of the vice-presidents, whom the good weather had drawn out of town.”

Later Newton came to realize how much he owed to Halley in this matter. In his letters to Halley henceforth he always referred to his book as if it had been Halley’s book. When the great work was finished at last Newton wrote to Halley under the date of July 5, 1687: “I have at length brought your book to an end, and hope it will please you.”

The finished work contained a note to this effect: “The inverse law of gravity holds in all the celestial motions, as was discovered also independently by my countrymen Wren, Hooke, and Halley.”