File:Astronomy for amateurs (1904) (14597171939).jpg

Identifier: astronomyforamat00flam (find matches)
Title: Astronomy for amateurs
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: Flammarion, Camille, 1842-1925 Welby, Frances A. (Frances Alice) tr
Subjects: Astronomy
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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e most fatal misfortunes to the inhabitantsof our planet. Is a comet visible in the Heavens ? Thereigning prince may make his testament and prepare todie. Another apparition in the firmament bodes war,famine, the advent of grievous pestilence. The astrol-ogers had an open field, and their fertile imaginationmight hazard every possible conjecture, seeing thatmisfortunes, great or small, are not altogether rare inthis sublunar world. How many intellects, and those not the most vulgar,from antiquity to the middle of the last century cursedthe apparition of these hirsute stars, which broughtdesolation to the heart of man, and poured their fatal ASTRONOMY FOR AMATEURS effluvia upon the head of poor Humanity. The historyof the superstitions and fears that they inspired of oldwould furnish matter for the most thrilling of romances.But, on the other hand, the volume would be little flat-tering to the common-sense of our ancestors. Despitethe respect we owe our forefathers, let us recall for a
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Fig. 49.—The Great Comet of 1858. moment the prejudices attaching to the most famouscomets whose passage, as observed from the Earth, hasbeen preserved to us in history. Without going back to the Deluge, we note that theRomans established a relation between the Great Comet THE COMETS of 43 B. c. and the death of Caesar, who had been assas-sinated a few months previously. It was, they asserted,the soul of their great Captain, transported to Heavento reign in the empyrean after ruling here below. Werenot the Emperors Lords of both Earth and Heaven ? We must in justice recognize that certain more in-dependent spirits emancipated themselves from thesesuperstitions, and we may cite the reply of Vespasian tohis friends, who were alarmed at the evil presage of aflaming comet: *Fear nothing, he said, this beardedstar concerns me not; rather should it threaten myneighbor the King of the Parthians, since he is hairyand I am bald. In the year 837 one of these mysterious visitantsappeared in th

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