HALLEY'S COMET.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9603, 24 September 1909, Page 3

HALLEY'S COMET.

Elaborate calculations which have been made by Messrs Cowell and Crommelir, two distinguished memburs of the Royal Astronomical Society, indicate that the celestial body known as Halley's comet, which travels round the sun in an orbit that | takes about 75 years to accomplish, J will re-appear early in 1910 as an > evening star. In March it will be lost in the sun's rays, after whicn it will re-appear as a morning star in ' April. It will pass between the ' earth and 'he am on May 12th at ' a distance of only 7,50f»,000 miles rom the earth, and for a week or two will-be visible as a very bright object in the west. The periodicity of this comet was discovered by Ed • round HaUey, a friend of Sir Isaac Newtun, and by using Halley's calculations as a basis, the various appearances have been traced Lack, with the assistance of records kept by Chinese annalists, to the year B.C. 11 when it stood over, Rome just before the death of Agrippa. It I was another comet, known as , Eucke's, which is supposed to be the i one that appeared in 44 8.C., the year of the .assassination of Julius I Caesar, but it is an ascertained fact (that Halley's comet appeared in the year 66 A.D., and hung over Jeru salem "in the shape of a sword", just before the destruction of the city by Titus. There is some uncertainty as to the exact date of subsequent appearance*, ac intervals uf 75 years or thereabouts, but it is

, established that thd comet wad seen again in 451, whan Attila was defeated with tremendous slaughter at I Chalons-sur-Marna by ths combined armies.of the Romans and the Gotha, and that it was shining, on the sky above Rome in 549, when the city was captured for the second time by Totila, King of the Ustrogoths The most curious coincidence for people of the British race is that this comet undoubtedly appeared in 1066, the year of the Norman Conquest. . . . There are 20 known periodic comets; thare are 43 which are probably periodical; thart are 200 which are possibly periodical; and there are various others concerning which it is impossible to predicate anything with certainty. Consequently, as some of these comets have a comparatively short orbit—like that of Eucke, for instance, which makes its journey in 1204 days under normal circumstances —it would be strange indeed if, during that long procession of deeds of blood which is called history, there were no special occasions which synchronised with the apparition of a comet.