When I think of Comets I first think of Halley’s Comet(1P/Halley) it last visited in 1986. It was about this time my sister and I were given books about space (I still have it but can’t find it or remember the title! It had a picture of the Columbia space shuttle on the cover?). The pictures in that book were wonderfully low quality and very slightly out of register. It is these images and the first image of this post, from our @printscienceorg project that have informed how I have been processing the images I’ve been taking of C/2020 F3, Neowise.

First image
The Comet of 1882, As seen from Streatham, Nov. 4th, 4 A.M. From a drawing by T.E. Key
The story of the heavens, by Robert Stawell Ball (London, 1913)

This great comet has fled from the gaze of man, and thirty generations of astronomers will pass away, before it will submit itself to human scrutiny. Then, perchance, it will again burst unexpectedly into view, to be firmly bound by the chains of mathematical analysis, which, thought more tenuous than gossamer, are stronger than steel. As a man’s biography comes suitably after his death, but before the remembrance of him has faded from men’s minds, so, since this comet is now buried in the darkness of space, a short history of it, with a fresh prediction of the time of its resurrection, may not be inappropriate.

Title: The Great Comet of September, 1882
Authors: Howe, H. A.
Journal: Sidereal Messenger, vol. 3, pp.97-101

Professor H.A. Howe, Denver University
#space #astronomy #stars #comet #neowise #astro #stargazing #nightsky #instaphoto #photooftheday @nikoneurope #d850 #neowise #neowisecomet #nikon #thefuture #skyatnight @europeanspaceagency #instacomet @nasa #nearearthobjects @neildegrassetyson #upinthesky (at Margate, Kent)
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