I love me some comets. I've seen quite a few in my time. Some were faint smudges in a big telescope's eyepiece, some seen only in distant spacecraft images, and some so bright they were obvious and awesome to my naked eye. They used to be considered harbingers, omens up for interpretation by mystics and people looking for reasons things happened the way they do. In reality, comets are just a class of objects in our solar system along with planets, asteroids, dust, and one biggish star.
Hmm. Did I say "just"? That's unfair. They are gorgeous, interesting objects, worthy of study. And 100 years ago today -- April 20, 1910 -- we got a pretty good look at the most famous of them all, Comet Halley, as it passed the Earth at a distance of just 23 million km (14 million miles). It got so bright that it was ...
