Nightly Logbook & Society Records — Seasons 1885 through 1892
Ad astra per vitrum proprium · To the stars by our own glass
The Great Comet of 1882 · Multi-Station Path
From its emergence above the eastern horizon in early September through its long fading run into the spring sky of 1883, the Great Comet was followed by every member who could carry a notebook outside. Each marker below records a measured position contributed by one of our six observing posts. Click any marker to read the night's calculation note.
Tap a numbered marker along the comet's track to read the contributing observation.
Correspondence Archive — Selected Letters Between Members & Affiliated Observers
Telescope Registry — Instruments of the Society, Their Makers, Their Particulars
Contribute an Observation
New observers — even visiting ones — are warmly invited to add to the logbook. Be specific. Be patient. Note your conditions honestly. The Society values careful eyes above showy ones.
THE MILLBROOK SENTINEL · EXTRA
Wednesday Morning, 20 September 1882 · Three Cents
A GREAT COMET BLAZES OVER THE EASTERN HORIZON
Brightest in Living Memory — Visible at Sunrise to the Unaided Eye — Society Observers Triangulate Path Across Three Counties
[ ENGRAVING — A long-tailed comet hangs above a stand of oaks, its head a brilliant burst, the tail sweeping diagonally upward across half the sky. Below the horizon, three small silhouettes lean over tripods and notebooks; one points; another writes by lantern. ]
MILLBROOK — Townsfolk who rose before the dawn of Sunday last beheld a spectacle unmatched in the recollection of even our oldest residents: a comet of extraordinary brightness, its head fully equal in lustre to Venus at her greatest elongation, drawing behind it a tail of pale gold that, measured from the horizon, exceeded twenty-five degrees.
By arrangement of the Millbrook Astronomical Observation Society, position measurements were taken simultaneously at three of the Society's posts — at the Pevensey farmhouse north of town, from the school cupola, and from Mr. Trescott's railway embankment east of the depot — and have been forwarded by post to the central calculator, Miss Pevensey, who reports the orbital elements as consistent with a body presently rounding the Sun at a near-grazing perihelion.
President Halsworth, addressed at the door of his workshop in the small hours, said only: "Come and see. It is not the kind of sight one wishes to talk about until one has watched it some while longer."
The Society announces an open evening on Friday next, all welcome, weather permitting, instruments shared freely. Children especially encouraged to bring a sweater and patience.
To every member, and to every kind stranger who has written in — I have not slept much this week, and I find I do not regret it.
The comet has done what no circular or society notice ever could. It has gathered us. From Galena, from Indianapolis, from the Pevensey porch and the Trescott embankment, from the Reverend Penrose's rooftop and from a schoolgirl in Kalamazoo who sent me a sketch on a piece of butcher paper — we are watching the same fire in the same sky, and our notebooks are filling at the same hour.
I do not know what professional astronomy will make of what we send them. I know only that what we are doing is real, that our measurements agree to within a hair when we lay them on the same chart, and that wonder is a kind of work — a careful one, a slow one, a true one.
Keep watching. Write to me.
Faithfully yours, Edmund Halsworth, President
Millbrook, the 20th of September, 1882
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