Comet Halley, officially named 1P / Halley, a comet named after British astrophysicist Edmund Halley, is a comet visible every 75 to 76 years. It is the most famous of the cyclic comets.
According to records, the first discoverers of Halley’s Comet were two Chinese astronomers, who detected the sign of a star moving at very high speed in 239 BC. At the time, Comet Halley was in an elliptical orbit, which was about to leave Neptune to begin entering orbit of Venus. Comet Halley was also the first comet to be discovered in astronomical history.
When Comet Halley returned in 164 BC and 87 BC, it is probably noted in the Babylonian inscriptions now held in the British Museum in London. “These texts had important implications for the orbital motion of this comet in ancient times,” said an article in Nature.
Halley’s most famous appearance occurred shortly before William’s army invaded England in 1066. It is said that Wiliam felt the comet announce his success. Anyway, this comet was inserted into the Bayeux Tapestry in honor of William.
Another occurrence of Halley’s Comet in 1301 probably inspired the Italian painter Giotto to paint the Star of Bethlehem in “Venerable for the Magi”, according to the Encyclopedia of Britannica.
However, astronomers of that time each viewed Halley’s Comet as a separate event. Comets are often seen as heralds of catastrophe or event.
Even when Shakespeare wrote the play “Julius Caesar” around 1600, just 105 before Edmond Halley calculated that a comet would appear cyclically, a famous phrase that said comets foreshadowed: “When beggars died, no comet was born. ‘appeared; it was heaven that signaled the prince’s death. “
Edmond Halley published the Compendium of Comet Astronomy in 1705, cataloging what he found while studying historical data for 24 comets that appeared near Earth between 1337 and 1698. Three of these observations appear to be very similar in orbit and in other parameters, prompting Halley to suggest that it was a comet that has visited Earth several times.
This comet appeared in 1531, 1607 and 1682. Halley proposed that the same comet could return to Earth in 1758. He did not live long enough to see its return – he died in 1742 – but its discovery inspired d ‘others to give its name to this comet.
The last time he appeared was in 1986 and he is expected to return in 2061.
