These notices
go back to more than five hundred years before the Christian era, and many
of them are still found to be of value in astronomical observations.*
[footnote] *The first comets of whose orbits we have any knowledge, and
which were calculated from Chinese observations, are those of 240 (under
Gordian II.), 539 (under Justinian), 565, 568, 574, 837, 1337, and 1385.
See John Russell Hind, in Schum., 'Astron. Nachr.', 1843, No. 498. While
the comet of 837 (which, according to Du Sejour, continued during
twenty-four hours within a distance of 2,000,000 miles from the Earth)
terrified Louis I. of France to that degree that he busied himself in
building churches and founding monastic establishments, in the hope of
appeasing the evils threatened by its appearance, the Chinese astronomers
made observations on the path of this cosmical body, whose tail extended
over a space of 60 degrees, appearing sometimes single and sometimes
multiple. The first comet that has been calculated solely from European
observations was that of 1456, known as Halley's comet, from the belief
long, but erroneously, entertained that the period when it was first
observed by that astronomer was its first and only well-attested appearance.
See Arago, in the 'Annuaire', 1836, p.
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