space phenomena Comets,Meteors,and other Space Phenomena Depicted Over 1,000 Years

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Centuries before Halley’s calculations, a group of artisans in Canterbury, England would embroider the very first depiction of Halley’s Comet known to humanity. Created around 1070, the Bayeux Tapestry is one of the most famous representations of the Norman conquest over England in 1066. Static vignettes that chronicle the great Battle of Hastings expand over 230 feet of fabric, and nestled behind the crowning of King Harold II beams the venerable Halley’s Comet. At the time, the comet was perceived as an evil omen, and is shown in the tapestry as a harbinger of the battle to come. Halley’s Comet would have last been seen on April 24, 1066, just four months after Harold’s coronation.

 

Comets, meteors, and meteorites have been shooting across works of art for more than a millennia. Tapestries, illuminated manuscripts, woodblock prints, and early photographs provide us with 1,000 years of visual astronomy conducted by people who probably never thought of themselves as astronomers.

 

Some of them are rough approximations of space phenomena as seen by the naked eye, while others are stunningly precise. Regardless, today they live on as shining reminders of our legacy as wonderers and explorers.

 

A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry showing men staring at Halley’s Comet.

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From the Nuremberg Chronicles, 1493.

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Augsburger Wunderzeichenbuch, Folio 28, c. 1552.

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Augsburger Wunderzeichenbuch, Folio 52 (erschrocklicher Comet, 1300).

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Augsburger Wunderzeichenbuch, Folio 52 (Comet mit einem grosen Schwantz, 1401).

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Augsburger Wunderzeichenbuch, Folio ? (Comet, 1506).

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The figure of a Fearful Comet, from Les oeuvres d’Ambroise Paré, 1579.

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Astronomie & Komet by Erastus, Dudith, Squarcialupi and Grynaeus, 1580.

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Comet of 1577, depicted by Georgium Jacobum von Datschitz, 1577.

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Detail of a Comet, Frankfurt am Main, 1665.

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Joseph Boll’s depiction of the 1704 comet over Catalonia, 1704.

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Astronomy: a meteor shower in the night sky. Mezzotint, after 1783.

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The comet, by Thomas Cornell (floruit 1792), published 1789.

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Image from J.J. Grandville’s Un Autre Monde (1844).

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Image from A Popular Treatise on Comets (1861) by James C. Watson.

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Contemporary drawing of the meteorite fall at Knyahinya (Ukraine) on June 9, 1866, by Wilhelm Ritter von Haidinger.

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Image from Astronomy (1875) by J. Rambosson.

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The great comet of 1881 (Comet C/1881 K1). Observed on the night of June 25-26 at 1h. 30m. A.M. Plate XI from The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings (1881).

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Leonid Meteor Storm, as seen over North America on the night of November 12-13, 1833, from E. Weiß’s Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt (1888).

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Morehouse’s Comet, Photographed at Yerkes Observatory, 1908.

 

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