Field of view
Since ancient times, comets have been seen as a sign of impending disaster. During a global pandemic, did Comet NEOWISE keep up with the tradition?
As long as there have been people to worry about what the future might hold, humanity has looked anxiously to the skies for signs and omens as some sort of indication about what might lie ahead.
Given the confidence and complacency which our scientific knowledge has bestowed, it is hard for us today to appreciate the very real fear and serious consideration that was accorded to the most transient of unusual natural phenomena. Even relatively rare meteorological happenings, such as a lunar halo appearing with the chance placement of a planet in it, gave rise to such sayings as, “If the moon is surrounded by a halo, and a planet stands in it: robbers will rage,” which everyone then believed.
The sudden unexpected appearance of an object as dramatic and mysterious as a bright comet was therefore deeply unsettling. No wonder that comets have always been taken to be harbingers of catastrophic or pivotal events. It is a seriously weird fact, however, that all through recorded history bright comets have often managed to appear just at the very moments that dramatic and world-changing circumstances were underway.
Perhaps the best-known example is Halley’s Comet, which flashed across the skies in 1066 before King Harold’s defeat at the Battle of Hastings. The Bayeux Tapestry records this apparition and also shows a number of nobles from King Harold’s court all looking up and pointing anxiously at the ‘hairy star’ which had so silently appeared.
It is widely known that Julius Caesar was murdered in 44 BC, but what is not so well known is that
– when his adopted son, Octavian, organised games and a funerary service to deify and celebrate his father, four months after his death – with incredibly appropriate timing, the bright comet of 44 BC (C/–43 K1) shone in the skies at the same time.
We have many examples of Roman Denarii silver coins from this era and there is an example with the impression of a ‘star’, which has been claimed to be a representation of Caesar’s Comet.
On 2 October 1264, Pope Urban IV died and, amazingly, this important event was also marked by the appearance of yet another bright comet.
We know it today as the Great Comet of 1264 (C/1264 N1); it is said that the Pope fell ill on the day it appeared and died on the day it disappeared.
Closer to our own times, Mark Twain was born in 1835 as Halley’s Comet rounded the Sun; he died from a heart attack in 1910 just as it returned. There are numerous other examples.
How strange and improbable it is then, that now, after such a long absence of bright comets from our skies, Comet NEOWISE should seemingly choose to continue this same centuries-old tradition and be at its spectacular best during the very months that COVID-19 took hold as a pandemic and swept around the planet. What are the chances? Perhaps, like the ancients, we should have taken its arrival to be an omen of things to come.