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Little is known of what people thought about comets before Aristotle, who observed his eponymous comet, and most of what is known comes secondhand.From cuneiform astronomical tablets, and works by Aristotle, Diodorus Siculus, Seneca, and one attributed to Plutarch but now thought to be Aetius, it is observed that ancient philosophers divided themselves into two main camps.
Around forty comets have had their orbits calculated based entirely on ancient Chinese records. [2] Of the well known comets, besides Halley, Brian G. Marsden suggested, based on Chinese and other ancient observations, that the Great Comet of 1106 was a previous apparition of Comet Ikeya–Seki. [14]
Diodorus wrote that the comet was believed by some to have foretold the decline of the Spartans, and describes the debate over its nature. [8]During their term of office, after the Lacedaemonians had held the supremacy in Greece for almost five hundred years, a divine portent foretold the loss of their empire... and a little later, to the surprise of all, the Spartans were defeated in a great ...
New research finds that the dark silicate glass strewn across a vast swath of the Atacama Desert was created by an exploding comet around 12,000 years ago. (Image/P.H. Schultz, Brown University)
Caesar's Comet was known to ancient writers as the Sidus Iulium ("Julian Star") or Caesaris astrum ("Star of Julius Caesar"). The bright, daylight-visible comet appeared suddenly during the festival known as the Ludi Victoriae Caesaris—for which the 44 BC iteration was long considered to have been held in the month of September (a conclusion drawn by Edmund Halley).
Comets have been observed and recorded since ancient times by many cultures and religions. Comets usually have highly eccentric elliptical orbits, and they have a wide range of orbital periods, ranging from several years to potentially several millions of years.
The Atacama Desert in northern Chile is one of the driest places on Earth, but it is not the weather that has left scientists puzzled, but the glass that is scattered across a large region of the ...
The confirmation of the comet's return was the first time anything other than planets had been shown to orbit the Sun. [36] It was also one of the earliest successful tests of Newtonian physics, and a clear demonstration of its explanatory power. [37] The comet was first named in Halley's honour by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in ...