The Leavenworth echo. [volume] (Leavenworth, Wash.) 1904-current, 1910-01-21
WHY NAMED "HALLFY'S COMET"
Son of London Soap Boiler First to Rob
Comets of Their Terrors and Make as
Tame as Are the Planets

able rate of speed and will soon be
vesible to all who have the time to
look up at the sky, is story Of human
ambition, equal in its way, to most of
the stories that make up the path and
and pulp Of history. Why are the
astronomers so keen on Halley's comet2
Thousands of comets as good or better
than Halley's nightly sweep the horizon
and may be seen by the mere effort
OF looking at the sky through a tele-
scope. Why this particular talk Of
Halley2 Who was HALEY, and why
does the appearance of the comet
named for him make such fuss in the
observatories of the world?
Edmund HALEY was the son of a
London soap boiler and was born in
London in 1856. He studied for a
time at Oxford, but left that university
without taking his degree. This was
not because HALEY was failure in his
studies, but because he was interested
in astronomy, and the big wigs at Ok
ford did not think that astronomy was
worth while. Latin and Greek were
the things worth while at Oxford, and
HALEY left there to find a welcome in
the arms of the Royal Society, to
which he read his first astronomical
paper while he was still under 80.
HALEY may be said to have been the
father of comets, or rather the tanner Of
comets. 1t was he who, armed with
the invincible, sure-cutting sword Of
higher mathematics, scaled the empy-
rean and cut out the comets from the
mass OF superstitious terror with which
they had been surrounded from time
immemorial. A comet to HALEY was
a celestial body moving in an ex-
tremely elliptical orbit and therefore a
thing without significance, once the
laws of its motion were understood.
Early in his career HALEY took up
the study of comets and calculated the
orbits of no less than twenty OF the
species. Among the twenty were
three which HALEY regarded with pc
culiar interest. These were the comets
which had appeared in 1881, in 1907
and 1852, three comets the orbits of
which seemed so much alike that Hal
ley suspected that in reality they might
be one and the same comet returning
to the sun at regular intervals of about
seventy years.
Revising his calculations and going
more deeply into them, he became
convinced that this notion was right,
and after submitting his theory to every
conceivable test and finding it good,
he decided to make bold stroke and
to predict the return of this comet in
1857 or 1853. He safeguarded his
prediction by pointing out that that the
comet might be delayed by the pow
erful attraction OF the planet Jupiter.
Up to the time when HALEY made
this prediction astronomers had regard
ed comets as kind of cosmic WHO
the-wisps, which came and went with
out law or sequence. Even the astro-
nomers themselves of those days were
not without their own fears OF world
trouble whenever comet put in an ap-
pearance. The people of all colors of
religious belief prayed in the churches,
and out of them, to ward off the bale
full effects of these strange visitants
from the nethermost depths of black
space. No man who cared for his life
would have dared, even if he had the
desire, to make jest of comet.
Comets were practical sociological
problem" before HALEY tanned them,
and when these facts are recalled Hal
ley's services to the human race will be
appreciated.
Would the prediction come true2 II
so, its verifcation would be one OF the
most important occurrences in human
history. If so, Halley's name would
be enrolled on the list of immor-
tails. If so, comets would be rob-
bed of their terors and king and
peasant could sleep in peace when
one of these frightsome apparitions
famed across the sky.
The astronomer realized the serious
responsibility he was taking. To play
with popular prejudices and beliefs was
no safer thing to do in that day than