No. 8 and last in our Comet a Week series, the most famous of them all: Halley’s Comet.
Halley’s is a 76-year-period comet, named after Sir Edmund Halley, who was the first to successfully calculate a comet’s orbit and predict its return. Since that 1759 apparition, astronomers have plotted Halley’s regular reappearances back to 240 BCE. Its most recent apparitions were in 1910 and 1986. The next one will be in 2061.
Halley’s 1910 appearance especially inflamed popular imagination. There were the usual comet panics and doomsday predictions; some astronomers warned that gases from its tail would poison life on Earth, and gas masks and anti-comet pills were sold.
The comet appeared in advertisements, songs, and on postcards. In larger cities, hotels hosted comet parties on their roofs.
And in case you’re curious, here’s a recording of “Halley’s Comet Rag”: