Long-tailed stars and mysterious glowing fireballs from the heavens were among the biggest and most fearful mysteries for stargazing humans throughout history. With the development of astronomy science, comets, meteors, meteorites and shooting stars became familiar objects of our universe, and with the advent of photography, depicting them became more precise. But before that talented artists created amazing drawings and paintings of these mysterious rocks.
The holes in their scientific knowledge were often filled with imagination and superstition, leaving a fascinating pictorial legacy for us to look at today.
Some of these centuries-old images were recently published by the Public Domain Review in a collection called “Flowers of the Sky.” It’s a stunning glimpse into at a time when comets and meteors delighted and terrified sky-watching humans. Enjoy. [Public Domain Review
“In 1007 A.D., a wondrous comet appeared. It gave off fire and flames in every direction,” wrote Augsburger Wunderzeichenbuch in The Book of Miracles in the 16th century.
Picture: Day+Faber
A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry show men staring at Halley’s Comet (c1066), and is the first known picture of the comet.
Picture: Myrabella/Wikimedia Commons
“In 1300 A.D., a terrible comet appeared in the sky… and in this year, on St Andrew’s Day, an earthquake shook the ground so that many buildings collapsed.” – The Book of Miracles
Picture: Day+Faber
“In 1401 A.D., a big comet with a tail… appeared in the sky in Germany. That was followed by a great, terrible plague in Swabia.” – The Book of Miracles
Picture: Day+Faber
The comet of 1456 as it was seen in Germany, from The Book of Miracles.
Picture: Day+Faber
The Ensisheim Meteorite, a stony meteorite that fell on November 7, 1492, in a wheat field outside of Ensisheim, Austria (now France). Woodcut in Ship of Fools (Daß Narrenschyff ad Narragoniam) by Sebastian Brant, 1494 Switzerland.
Picture: ADS/Harvard
Melencolia I: In Albrecht Dürer’s well known engraving a comet or meteor can be seen shooting across the sky, 1514.
Picture: BIBLIOTECA DIGITAL HISPÁNICA
1527: The comet’s “head like a bent arm, as if it had a sword in its hand and wanted to strike. And at the point of the sword there were three big stars and from the stars sprang a cloud-coloured stream, which was longer than the comet’s tail.” – The Book of Miracles
Picture: Day+Faber
1531: The comet’s tail was “longer than a rice skewer, one and a half feet wide.” – The Book of Miracles
Picture: Day+Faber
View of a celestial phenomenon that appeared in Salon in Provence, c1547.
Picture: Gallica
A sword as if about to strike, 1560.
Picture: Wellcome Library, London
The comet of 1577.
Picture: Zentralbibliothek Zürich/Wikimedia Commons
The comet that killed the pegasus, 1665.
Image source: Gallica
Comets and shooting stars in Description de l’Univers, by Alain Manesson Mallet, 1685.
Picture: Columbia University
A meteor exploded over Catalonia on Christmas Day. Drawing by Joseph Boll, 1704.
Picture: Xavier Caballe/Wikimedia Commons
The six-tailed comet of 1744, in Richard Anthony Proctor’s book Flowers of the Sky.
Picture: National Archives
The Comet Stern over the observatory of Dr Rehlen in Nuremberg, c1750.
Picture: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
The Great Meteor was an unusually bright bolide observed in 1783 from the British Isles, at a time when such phenomena were not well understood.
Picture: Wellcome Library, London
The Great Comet of 1811 was visible to the naked eye for around 260 days, and it was the most brilliant comet that appeared in the 19th century.
Picture: Newcomb-Engelmanns Populare Astronomie, Verlag Von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1922, Leipzig.
Picture: Wellcome Library, London
A German engraving of a comet, c1830.
Picture: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Leonid Meteor Storm, as seen over North America on the night of November 12-13, 1833. From Edmund Weiß’s “Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt.”
Picture: Wikimedia Commons
The Great Comet of 1843 (also known as the Great March Comet), which developed an extremely long tail.
Picture: Newcomb-Engelmanns Populare Astronomie, Verlag Von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1922, Leipzig.
A meteor seen at Paddington, England in 1850.
Picture: Wellcome Library, London
The Comet of 1853 as an anthropomorphic comet, with a tail composed of Earth-bound objects.
Picture: Wellcome Library, London
Comet Donati, or Donati’s Comet, 1858.
Picture: Newcomb-Engelmanns Populare Astronomie, Verlag Von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1922, Leipzig.
Picture: Wellcome Library, London
Combined image of two meteor shower orbits, August 1862 and November 1866.
Picture: Newcomb-Engelmanns Populare Astronomie, Verlag Von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1922, Leipzig.
Drawings of the meteorite fall at Knyahinya (Ukraine) on June 9, 1866.
Picture: Wikimedia Commons
The Great Meteor of October 7, 1868.
Picture: Wellcome Library, London
The November Meteors, as observed between midnight and 5 AM on the night of November 13, 1868. Amazing artwork from Étienne Léopold Trouvelot’s Astronomical Drawings, 1881.
Picture: University of Michigan Library Digital Collections
A bolide over Athens, from Jean Pierre Rambosson’s book Astronomy, 1875.
Picture: National Archives
The fall of a bolide at sea, from Astronomy.
Picture: National Archives
The great comet of 1881 (Comet C/1881 K1). Even more amazing artwork from Étienne Léopold Trouvelot’s Astronomical Drawings, 1881.
Picture: University of Michigan Library Digital Collections
Halley’s comet at dawn, a charcoal drawing by Elizabeth Shippen Green Elliott, 1909.
Picture: Library Of Congress