Comets, Meteors and Other Stars of Wonder

Comets, meteors, meteorites and shooting stars are signs of God's love, portents of doom, fretful conversations with the divine, divine illumination, wonderful and full of mystery.

Comets, meteors, meteorites and shooting stars are signs of God’s love, portents of doom, fretful conversations with the divine, heavenly illuminations, wonderful and full of mystery. Artists adore them.

The word comet is rooted in the Greek komḗtēs, meaning ‘long-haired star’. The rocks hurtle around the sun. Halley’s Comet  reappears every 76 years. Other comets taken hundreds or even thousands of years to reappear. Some are never seen again.

To keep them in view, artists down the ages have painted meteors, comets and shooting stars.

 

Mr. Babinet almost missed the comet» by Honoré Daumier

Mr. Babinet almost missed the comet» by Honoré Daumier

 

Watercolour from the Comet Book ('Kometenbuch') a 16th century album of stylised sketches of both comets and meteors produced in Flanders or Northern France, ca. 1587

Watercolour from the Comet Book (‘Kometenbuch’) a 16th century album of stylised sketches of both comets and meteors produced in Flanders or Northern France, ca. 1587

Comet Donati above Notre-Dame. Drawing published in The sky of Amédée Guillemin, fifth edition (1877), Hachette.

Comet Donati above Notre-Dame.
Drawing published in The sky of Amédée Guillemin, fifth edition (1877), Hachette.

“I see myself as a huge fiery comet, a shooting star. Everyone stops, points up and gasps “Oh look at that!” Then- whoosh, and I’m gone…and they’ll never see anything like it ever again… and they won’t be able to forget me- ever.”
— Jim Morrison

 

Planetary System. Eclipse of the Sun. The Moon. The Zodiacal Light. Meteoric Shower. Levi Walter Yaggy 1887

Planetary System. Eclipse of the Sun. The Moon. The Zodiacal Light. Meteoric Shower. Levi Walter Yaggy 1887 – Buy This Print

Portents of death and destruction. Gouache, ca. 1910

Portents of death and destruction. Gouache, ca. 1910 – via Wellcome

An illustration of the six-tailed Great Comet of 1744, observed before sunrise on March 9, 1744, from Les Comètes, by Amédée Guillemin

An illustration of the six-tailed Great Comet of 1744, observed before sunrise on March 9, 1744, from Les Comètes, by Amédée Guillemin

Comet of 1577, depicted by Georgium Jacobum von Datschitz, 1577

Comet of 1577, depicted by Georgium Jacobum von Datschitz, 1577

Bayeux Tapestry - Scene 32 : men staring at Halley's Comet - Scene 33 : Harold at Westminster

Tapisserie de Bayeux – Scène 32 : des hommes observent la comète de Halley – Scène 33 : Harold dans son palais de Westminster

Giotto di Bondone, Adoration of the Magi, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua (c1301-04)

Giotto di Bondone, Adoration of the Magi, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua (c1301-04)

Explosion of the Quenngouck bolide meteor, 27th Dec 1857 (from Le Ciel by Amédée Guillemin, 1877 - RCScI Collection).

Explosion of the Quenngouck bolide meteor, 27th Dec 1857 (from Le Ciel by Amédée Guillemin, 1877 – RCScI Collection).

Étienne Trouvelot of the Great Comet of 1881, from Trouvelot's Astronomical Drawings, 1882

Étienne Trouvelot of the Great Comet of 1881, from Trouvelot’s Astronomical Drawings, 1882

The Comet of 1680 (Autumn)

The Comet of 1680 (Autumn)

Lambert Doomer - Comet over Alkmaar. 1681

Lambert Doomer – Comet over Alkmaar. 1681

 

 

Tove Jansson, Moomins and the Comet Chase, first Russian edition , 1991

“You must go on a long journey before you can really find out how wonderful home is.”
— Tove Jansson, Comet in Moominland 

 

Astronomy: a meteor shower in the night sky. Mezzotint, after 1783

Astronomy: a meteor shower in the night sky. Mezzotint, after 1783 – via Wellcome

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:
“Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blixen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”
As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So up to the housetop the coursers they flew
With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too—
– Clement C. Moore, The Night Before Christmas

 

On Christmas day 1704 a great light appeared in the sky of Catalonia. It was a meteorite of a kilogram of a rocky type that crashed near Catalonia. It was collected in the Scientific Miscellany of Josep Bolló, who made the drawing, describing it as Signe Magnus, “And as we have observed, it can be said that it was an omen for the miseries and calamities that has suffered and suffers all the Kingdom of Spain, and more particularly the Principality of Cathalunya.”

The falling of the stars. From Prophetic Lights by Ellet Joseph Waggoner, 1888.

The falling of the stars. From Prophetic Lights by Ellet Joseph Waggoner, 1888. Buy This Print

The November Meteors by E.L. Trouvelot, 1868

The November Meteors by E.L. Trouvelot, 1868 – Buy This Print

 

“I wanted to feel the blood running back into my veins, even at the cost of annihilation. I wanted to shake the stone and light out of my system. I wanted the dark fecundity of nature, the deep well of the womb, silence, or else the lapping of the black waters of death. I wanted to be that night which the remorseless eye illuminated, a night diapered with stars and trailing comets. To be of night so frighteningly silent, so utterly incomprehensible and eloquent at the same time. Never more to speak or to listen or to think.”
— Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn 

 

Leonid meteor shower over Niagara FallsIllustration from Edmund Weiss, Bilder-Atlas der Sternenwelt [Image atlas of the star world], Stuttgart, 1892 via Smithsonian (3)_1

Leonid meteor shower over Niagara FallsIllustration from Edmund Weiss, Bilder-Atlas der Sternenwelt [Image atlas of the star world], Stuttgart, 1892 – Buy This Print

Comet , from Das Wunderzeichenbuch (The Book of Miracles ) , Augsburg, 1552

Comet , from Das Wunderzeichenbuch (The Book of Miracles ) , Augsburg, 1552

George Cruikshank, Passing Events, or the Tail of the Comet of 1853

George Cruikshank, Passing Events, or the Tail of the Comet of 1853

 

 

Honoré Daumier, “The German astronomer releases a famous canard”, illustration for Le Charivari, 17 March 1857.

Honoré Daumier, “The German astronomer releases a famous canard”, illustration for Le Charivari, 17 March 1857.

 

1401 -- "In the year A.D. 1401, a large comet with a peacock tail appeared in the sky over Germany. This was followed by a most severe plague in Swabia."

1401 — “In the year A.D. 1401, a large comet with a peacock tail appeared in the sky over Germany. This was followed by a most severe plague in Swabia.”

“And there in the middle, high above Prechistensky Boulevard, amidst a scattering of stars on every side but catching the eye through its closeness to the earth, its pure white light and the long uplift of its tail, shone the comet, the huge, brilliant comet of 1812, that popular harbinger of untold horrors and the end of the world. But this bright comet with its long, shiny tail held no fears for Pierre. Quite the reverse: Pierre’s eyes glittered with tears of rapture as he gazed up at this radiant star, which must have traced its parabola through infinite space at speeds unimaginable and now suddenly seemed to have picked its spot in the black sky and impaled itself like an arrow piercing the earth, and stuck there, with its strong upthrusting tail and its brilliant display of whiteness amidst the infinity of scintillating stars. This heavenly body seemed perfectly attuned to Pierre’s newly melted heart, as it gathered reassurance and blossomed into new life.”
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

 

 

Meteorite plunges to the earth' , from Minerals from earth and sky. Smithsonian scientific series. 1929. Frontispiece

Meteorite plunges to the earth’ , from Minerals from earth and sky. Smithsonian scientific series. 1929. Frontispiece

“I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: “Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.”
— Mark Twain

 

 

Comet From Lustige Blätter, 1899.

Comet From Lustige Blätter, 1899. – Buy This Print

O star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to thy perfect light

 

Comet , Illustration from French satirical magazine ‘L'Assiette au Beurre’, 1910. Artist Unknown

Comet , Illustration from French satirical magazine ‘L’Assiette au Beurre’, 1910. Artist Unknown

J.J. Grandville , 'A Comet's Journey' , Illustration from 'Un Autre Monde', 1844

J.J. Grandville , ‘A Comet’s Journey’ , Illustration from ‘Un Autre Monde’, 1844. Buy The Print

J.J. Grandville , 'A Comet's Journey' , Illustration from 'Un Autre Monde', 1844.

J.J. Grandville , ‘A Comet’s Journey’ , Illustration from ‘Un Autre Monde’, 1844. Buy This Print

 

comet

Painting of the comet of 1532, (later identified as Halley’s Comet). Unknown artist. Buy This Print

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