Mr. Halley's Comet

Halley's Comet lights up the sky in this picture from 1910, its last great appearance in Earth's night sky. After analyzing the passages of many comets over the previous centuries, in the 18th century British astronomer Edmund Halley had surmised that several of those comets were actually different appearances of a single body, which he predicted would reappear in late 1758. It was first seen on Christmas night of that year by Johann Palitzsch, a German amateur astronomer. In honor of Halley's discovery that comets can loop close to the Sun many times, astronomers named the 1758 comet in his honor. It last returned to Earth's night sky in 1986, and will make its next appearance in 2061.