Halley's Comet 1985 - 1986

Halley's Comet 1985 - 1986

 

Halley's Comet and Mark Twain

National Post Card Week
May 2-8, 2010

A Tribute to the Year of Mark Twain
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
November 30, 1835 - April 21, 1910

100th Anniversary of his death
125th anniversary of the publication of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
175th Anniversary of his birth

Mark Twain and Halley's Comet
"I came in with Halley's comet in 1835.  It is coming again next year (1910), 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

Halley's Comet, visible from Earth every 75 to 76 years, put on bright shows in both 1835 and 1910.  It was visible at the time of Mark Twain's birth, and the perihelion (the point at which the comet is closest to the sun and the brightest) in 1910 was April 20, the day before Mark Twain died.

Comet Brooks of 1911

Comet Brooks of 1911 from a negative made with the Bruce Photographic Telescope, Yerkes Observatory,
University of Chicago,
Williams Bay, Wisconsin.
The comet was 66 million miles distant from the earth.
The small streaks are trails of stars

Halley's Comet 1910 from the Harvard College Observatory

Halley's Comet, April 21, 1910, seen from Arequipa, Peru.  reappearing 1985-86.
Photograph Harvard College Observatory.