November 15, 2024
Thanks to HMU Tutor, Peter Ponzio, for today’s post.
Milton, in describing Satan’s fall in Book II of Paradise Lost, compares the fallen angel to a comet. The five-line description of Satan reads as follows:
“Satan stood/ Unterrifi’d and like a Comet burn’d, / That fires the length of Ophiucus huge/ In the Artick Sky, and from his horrid hair/ Shakes Pestilence and Warr…” (126)
The name comet comes from the Latin word “coma,” which means hair, and refers to the tails which appear on some comets. The ancients thought these tails looked like hair streaming from the nucleus of the comet, hence the name. Milton plays on this name when he references Satan’s “horrid hair.” He makes a reference to the north, the direction from which the fallen angels attack the faithful angels, when he notes that Satan travels in the “Artick Sky.”
Milton’s description of the “Comet burn’d” refers to the great comet of 1618 – 1619 which appeared near the constellation Ophiuchus, and gradually made its way northward until it disappeared over the arctic in the Northern Hemisphere
In October, 2024, another comet, Tsuchinshan-Atlas (pictured above, photo credit: Peter Ponzio), also appeared near the constellation Ophiuchus reminding me that comets have made appearances in literature and science throughout the ages.
Comets in Literature and Myth
To the ancient Greeks and Romans, the appearance of a comet was a portent that prophesized a disturbing event. Plutarch, in his book entitled The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans provides a life of Julius Caesar, and writes that: “The most signal preternatural appearances were the great comet which shone very bright for seven nights after Caesar’s death. And then disappeared. . .” (604). Suetonius, in his work The Twelve Caesars, which appeared sometime after Plutarch, comments on the games given in Julius Caesar’s honor by Octavian and notes that, “. . . on the first day of the Games given by his successor Augustus in honour of this apotheosis, a comet appeared about an hour before sunset and shone for seven days, running” (49). Later in the same work, Suetonius writes that several omens appeared after the death of Claudius, including: “a comet, lightning that struck his father’s tomb, and an unusual mortality among magistrates of all ranks” (208).
Galileo Galilei recalled the appearance of the comet at the death of Julius Caesar, in his book, Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger). In the dedication of the book to Duke Cosimo II De Medici, Galileo noted that Augustus Caesar “tried to place Julius Caesar in their number [the stars] for when he wished to name a star (one of those the Greeks call Cometa, and we call hairy) that had appeared in his time the Julian star, it mocked the hope of so much desire by disappearing shortly” (30).
William Shakespeare, in is play, Julius Caesar, takes up the theme of a comet acting as an evil portent in Act II, scene ii, when Calpurnia asks her husband, Julius Caesar, not to venture to the Senate on the Ides of March and proclaims: “When beggars die, there are no comets seen;/The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes” (578).
Shakespeare, in Henry VI, part 1, Act I, scene i, makes reference to the idea that comets foretell historic events when at the funeral of Henry V, the Duke of Bedford remarks:
“Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night! / Comets, importing change of times and states, / Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky, / And with them scourge the bad revolting stars/ That have consented unto Henry’s death!” (1)
Later in the same play, the British attack the French at Rouen, and the Dauphin in Act III, scene ii, tells the Bastard of Orleans: “Now shine it like a comet of revenge, /A prophet to the fall of all our foes!” (16)
Count Leo Tolstoy, in his novel, War and Peace, refers to the Great Comet of 1811- 1812 when he has Pierre look up in the sky above Moscow near Prechistenka Boulevard which was:
“…surrounded and sprinkled on all sides by stars, but distinguished from them all by its nearness to the earth, its white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the enormous and brilliant comet of 1812—the comet which was said to portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world. In Pierre, however, the comet with its long luminous tail aroused no feeling of fear. On the contrary, he gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears, at this bright comet which, having traveled in its orbit with inconceivable velocity through immeasurable space, seemed suddenly—like an arrow piercing the earth—to remain fixed in a chosen spot, vigorously holding its tail erect, shining and displaying its white light and countless other scintillating stars. It seemed to Pierre that this comet fully responded to what was passing in his own softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life.” (340-1)
For Pierre, the comet symbolizes the expansion of his soul and the recognition of his love for Natasha. At the same time, it also symbolizes the coming defeat of Napolean, and the woes he would experience as a result of his ill-conceived invasion of Russia.
Comets do not always portend doom; in some cases, they announce the birth of a significant historical personage. In his book, A Sorrow in Our Hearts, Allan W. Eckert relates that the great Shawnee war chief, Tecumseh, was born in January 1768, and that at his birth a great comet or meteor appeared in the sky. The celestial object, whether a meteor or comet, was known to the Shawnee as,
“…The Panther—a powerful spirit passing over to the south, seeking a great hole for sleep. . . By Shawnee custom, a male child is not named for ten days after his birth, nor a girl for twelve, in the belief that during that period an unsoma—an event worthy of notice, involving an animal of some kind—would occur which would suggest what Moneto or the Great Spirit wished the child’s name to be. But this time there would be no need for waiting, for one of the most awe-inspiring signs of all had been given at the instant of birth and both parents knew that with such a coincident unsoma having occurred, there could be no other name for this boy child more significant than The Panther Passing Across. Tecumseh!” (40 – 1)
Mark Twain, the pen name for Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was born on November 30, 1835, some fourteen days after the appearance of Halley’s Comet. Twain predicted that because he was born at the appearance of the comet, he would die when the comet returned. On April 21, 1910, the comet appeared as a naked-eye object, and Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain, true to his prediction, died on the same day.
What is a Comet?
The view of the ancients on the subject of comets is perhaps best exemplified by Aristotle in his treatise on Meteorology. Aristotle explains:
“We know that the dry and warm exhalation is the outermost part of the terrestrial world which falls below the circular motion. It, and a great part of the air that is continuous with it below, is carried round the earth by the motion of the circular revolution. In the course of this motion it often ignites wherever it may happen to be of the right consistency, and this we maintain to be the cause of the ‘shooting’ of scattered ‘stars’. We may say, then, that a comet is formed when the upper motion introduces into a gathering of this kind a fiery principle not of such excessive strength as to burn up much of the material quickly, nor so weak as soon to be extinguished, but stronger and capable of burning up much material, and when exhalations of the right consistency rises from below and meets it.” (450)
It is important to note that in Aristotle’s view, the heavens were incorruptible and incapable of change. The appearance of comets presented a unique challenge to this view: because the heavens were unchanging, how did comets, which seemed to appear to move across the night sky on successive nights, fit into the heavenly realm postulated by Aristotle. The solution was to ascribe the presence of comets to earthly exhalations, which accounted for their movement across the heavens, while leaving the crystalline spheres of the heavens to remain unchanged.
This view of the nature of comets remained largely unchallenged until the fourteenth century of the common era, when Tycho Brahe proved that comets were, in fact, celestial bodies. Brahe developed proof, using parallax, that the comet of 1577 was more distant than the moon. Isaac Newton, in his work, Principia, demonstrated that celestial bodies move in conic sections (circle, ellipse, parabola, or hyperbola) and therefore that comets behave in this manner. Edmund Halley, using Newton’s formulae, was able to predict the appearance of the comet now known by his name, in 1758 (“Solar System” 581 – 590).
The current theory of cometary formation holds that these bodies developed at roughly the same time as the solar system, some 4.6 billion years ago, but that unlike planets and dwarf planets, they did not accrete into larger bodies. Comets are located in one of two regions in the solar system. Periodic comets, like Halley, are located in the Kuiper Belt, which is beyond the orbit of Neptune, or thirty astronomical units (one astronomical unit is equal to the distance from Earth to the Sun, or 93 million miles), and extends to approximately 1,000 astronomical units. The second location of comets is the Oort Cloud, a region that extends beyond the Kuiper Belt and is thought to be between 2,000 to 10,000 astronomical units away. Comets which originate in the Oort Cloud are called long-period comets, and may take hundreds or thousands of years to be seen from Earth (Ibid.).
Comets are composed of two parts: the nucleus and the tail. The nucleus is composed of a combination of water vapor, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia as well as dust grains which are composed primarily of silicate materials. The tail is formed after the comet enters the solar system, usually between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, and begins to heat up as it approaches the Sun. The tail is composed of dust and ionized gases that escape from the nucleus. Because the tail is caused by the heating up of the nucleus, the tail appears to point away from the Sun (Ibid).
Comets are named using the year of discovery, the month discovered, and the person or group responsible for its discovery (Ibid).
Some Recent Comets
Works Cited
Milton, John. Paradise Lost, Great Books of the Western World. Ed. Adler, Mortimer J. Vol. 29. 60 vols. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. 2007. Print.
Ponzio, Peter J. Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas on October 19, 2024. Author’s Personal Collection.
Plutarch. The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans. Ed. Adler, Mortimer J. Vol. 13. 60 vols. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. 2007. Print.
Suetonius, Gaius Tranquillus. The Twelve Caesars. Translated by Robert Graves, London: The Folio Society. 2009. Print.
Galilei, Galileo, Siderius Nuncius or The Sidereal Messenger. Translated by Albert Van Helden, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1989. Print.
Shakespeare, William. Shakespeare I, “Julius Caesar.” Ed. Adler, Mortimer J. Vol. 23. 60 vols. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. 2007. Print.
—. Shakespeare I, “The First Part of King Henry The Sixth, I.” Ed. Adler, Mortimer J. Vol. 23. 60 vols. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. 2007. Print.
Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. Ed. Adler, Mortimer J. Vol. 51. 60 vols. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. 2007. Print.
Eckert, Allan W. A Sorrow In Our Heart. New York: Bantam Books. 1992. Print.
Aristotle. Aristotle I, “Meteorology.” Ed. Adler, Mortimer J Vol. 7. 60 vols. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. 2007. Print.
“Solar System.” The New Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Ed. Robert McHenry Vol. 27 29 vols. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Inc. 1992. Print.
Ponzio, Peter J. Comet C/2023 E3, taken on February 5, 2023. Author’s Personal Collection.
—. Comet Olbers/ 13P taken on July 29, 2024. Author’s Personal Collection.
—. Comet 12P/Pons Brooks, taken on March 18, 2024 as it passed the constellation Cygnus. Author’s Personal Collection.
