Comets!

On the 10^th of November 1618, some servants who were up very early in the morning reported to Figueroa, the Spanish Ambassador, that they had seen “une grande meteor au ciel”.  When another valet and some Armenians also saw something the next night, the Ambassador decided to wait up and observe for himself.  Sitting outside in the cold Isfahan night, enveloped in his robe, he was amazed to admire a huge comet – so large that it occupied “nearly a quarter of the heavens”.

Although this later became visible even in daylight (and remained observable for 3 months); Figueroa reports that it didn’t have the same brilliance “as one has seen with other comets”.  It was an ashen colour, and was curved so that it seemed “like a Turkish cutlass”.  Little sparks of fire occasionally burst from it.  On its left, towards the rising sun, there was another smaller comet, much more vivid and enflamed than the other, but which was lost to sight after a few days, because of its nearness to the Sun.

These comets – there were actually three – caused a world-wide sensation.  Medals and commemorative coins were issued (click here and scroll down here for images).  Books were written (click here for one example).  King James of England even wrote a poem. Everywhere, predictions were made as to what dire events would follow these harbingers of doom.

In Persia, astronomer/astrologers interpreted the comet to mean “the onset of pestilence with heavy loss of life, and the imminence of wars and bloodshed”.  Iskander Beg reports that it was predicted that the maximum effect would be “in the east, north and south”, with less impact on Iran, which was “the centre of the civilised world [sic!]” – and then wryly notes that serious effects were felt in Iran as well as in the West (the only area not mentioned by the forecasters): “many people died; and seditious mutterings among the common people affected even the upper classes”.

In Europe, one of the three comets was the first ever to be observed with a telescope (by Cysastus).  Comets provided evidence in the then-contemporary arguments about heliocentrism (was the sun or the earth at the centre of everything?) and Galileo, Grassi and Giuducci disputed fiercely about this.  Galileo was (sadly!) wrong (he thought that the comets were only “a play of light”) – but his book on the three comets is considered to contain his scientific manifesto, with important wider arguments on the nature of science itself, as brilliantly expressed in his famed statement, “Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—which stands continually open to our gaze”.