The Cosmic Sublime: On the Unpredictability and Allure of Comets

Over nine hundred years ago, an image of Halley’s Comet was embroidered in the Bayeux Tapestry, as a portent of the Battle of Hastings and the bloodshed to come. In 1514, Albrecht Dürer created Melencolia I, an engraving pervaded by an otherworldly gloom that seems to emanate directly from the comet overhead. Later that same century, Shakespeare wrote: When beggars die, there are no comets seen / The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes—a sentiment that more than a few Roman emperors viewed as fact.

As reflected in these works of art, throughout history, comets have inspired fear and trepidation. Of his fellow Romans’ reactions to bright comets, Seneca noted how many would respond with “grim predictions.” Rulers, royals, and ordinary human beings since the beginning of the written record have seen them as omens hinting at the likelihood of a poor harvest, a bloody war, a great plague; foretelling the deaths of powerful men.

But today, the arrival of bright comets tends to attract more wonder than fear. Our increased scientific understanding of comets and their orbits, far from detracting from the excitement generated by these celestial visitors, has only served to increase it. We saw this most notably in the lead-up to Comet Halley’s return in 1986, when star parties, comet cruises, and even dedicated comet-viewing flights were planned in celebration of the occasion across the world.

This year, having been without a “great comet” in the northern hemisphere since Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997, hopes have been running high for the potential of Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS, which could perhaps reach naked eye visibility in September. Definitions of what constitutes a great comet vary, but generally, the comet in question should become bright enough to be easily visible unaided, with a tail long enough to be visually striking. If the most hopeful current predictions hold true, Tsuchinshan–ATLAS could be a captivating vision in the evening sky for northern viewers, although estimations of its maximum potential brightness have already been downgraded.

Davide Farnocchia, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, observes that “the comet will reach the closest point to the Sun on September 27 at a distance of 0.4 astronomical units. Around that time, the comet has the potential to be visible with the naked eye if it keeps brightening as current models predict.” As history shows, despite all the advances of astronomy, exactly how visually impressive a comet will prove when it arrives in our skies is subject to so many variables that it remains mystifyingly difficult to predict. 

For many, the enduring unpredictability of comets, and their capacity to surprise us, contributes to their allure. As Brad Tucker, astrophysicist and cosmologist at The Australian National University, explains, the “hope and uncertainty of tracking comets is part of the excitement. As we wait for the next great comet to reveal itself, the searching and science involved in the process is what makes it fascinating.” Yet the unreliability of comets has led to both disappointments and missed opportunities.

In 1965, Comet Ikeya-Seki arrived with little warning, having been discovered just a month and a half before its closest brush with the sun. Partly due to this suddenness, Ikeya-Seki went by largely unnoticed on the global stage—despite being the brightest comet of the twentieth century. In 1970, Comet Bennett’s sudden brightness surpassed expectations and as such, was publicized too late for many to see it at its peak. Conversely, in 1973, speculation over the possibility of Comet Kohoutek becoming a great comet later that year became a media sensation, to the extent that the comet featured on the cover of Time magazine, and President Nixon was broadcast speaking about it with Skylab astronomers.

Yet the hopes of those waiting to experience an unforgettable celestial spectacle—including the passengers of multiple comet-viewing cruise ships—were dashed when Kohoutek failed to reach expected levels of brightness. This very disappointment led to what for many was a missed opportunity, three years later, when the much brighter Comet West was less heavily publicized and consequently viewed by fewer people. Halley’s Comet in 1986, despite the excitement its return generated, was a much more distant sight than during its last visit in 1910, and Comet Austin, in 1990, failed to meet widespread expectations of naked eye visibility.

More recently in 2007, Comet McNaught reached historically rare levels of brightness, with an impressive tail that spanned 35 degrees, yet its position in the sky restricted its visibility mainly to southern hemisphere viewers, and it was thus overlooked by much of the world’s media, despite being one of the brightest comets in living memory.

What exactly is it that we hope for, in experiencing a truly bright comet, and what is it that so disappoints us when an anticipated bright comet fails to eventuate? In the eighteenth century, Edmund Burke proposed that certain overwhelming experiences, particularly involving nature, in which a human being senses themselves to be small and insignificant—overpowered by a greater order of existence and yet strangely also at one with it—were encounters with what he called “the sublime.” For Burke, a central characteristic of sublime experience is a powerful kind of awe or astonishment, in which “the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other.” Here, Burke could well be describing the experience that can arise when contemplating the sudden apparition of a comet.

Before a bright comet, we contemplate the vastness and infinity of space, the distance of the stars, the magnitude of other galaxies, and the strangeness of cosmic time in contrast to human time. In the process, we can feel both dwarfed by, and reminded of our place within this universe. Even Comet Halley’s short-period orbit of approximately seventy-six years overwhelms the measures we use to understand our human lifespans. My own father, echoing the experience of many in viewing Comet Halley during its last visit in 1986, explained to me how he had watched the comet with me as a baby in our dark garden, thinking about time and mortality, knowing that while I would probably see it once more in my old age when it returned in 2061, he likely would not.

Comets with longer orbital periods, such as Hale-Bopp, which returned to our skies in 1997 for the first time in over four thousand years, confront us similarly with questions about time, reminding us not only of the vanishingly short span of our human lives, but also of the relative brevity of human civilization when compared with the epochs of comets and planets. Viewing Hale-Bopp, more than a few spectators must surely have wondered what other eyes had seen it last, back when our planet looked so different, and pharaohs ruled Egypt.

And just like historic moments in human culture, such as when a celebrity dies or a disaster is declared, bright comets can act as waymarks in our memories, allowing us to track a particular date in history to a place, activity and mood that defined our own lives back then—details which might otherwise have been forgotten. And in the case of Halley’s Comet, the visual and written records that survive of its regular returns throughout the centuries provide those living today with a uniquely tangible connection to the experiences, attitudes and imaginations of fellow human beings now dead for hundreds or thousands of years.

In light of such experiences, it’s perhaps unsurprising that both Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, in extending Burke’s theory of the sublime, invoked celestial examples. For his part, Schopenhauer discusses how if, in contemplating the universe, we “meditate on the thousands of years that are past or to come, or if the heavens at night actually bring before our eyes innumerable worlds… we feel ourselves dwindle to nothing.” Yet at the same time, he explains how there can arise a concurrent sense of interconnectedness with the universe, a sense of being “at one with the world” and also “exalted by its immensity.” This felt experience, Schopenhauer attests, “is the transcending of our own individuality.”

If this strange sensation of being at once dwarfed and awed by a visitor in the sky is a key aspect of humanity’s appreciation of comets, it’s the sense of being deprived of the opportunity to feel this way that contributes to the disappointment that can be felt in the case of a comet that fails to impress the naked eye. In our era of significant division, myopia, and socio-political strife, and in the absence of spiritual faith for many of us, it’s perhaps unsurprising that we might long for experiences that remind us that we are part of an order of existence far greater than our present human societies and problems.

While the above-mentioned philosophers focus on the sublime as an individual experience, it’s notable that anticipating and watching comets is often a shared experience. From New York to Vienna, a festival-like spirit characterized Halley’s visit in 1910, with parties, feasting, and balloon flights. Global anticipation of Halley’s return in 1986 created a spirit of international fellowship, furthering curiosity about our universe. While multiple countries sent space probes to learn more about the comet, thousands of ordinary people as well as professional astronomers shared information as part of International Halley Watch, and gathered in key places around the world to welcome the comet in collective excitement.

Bright comets, when they arrive, can offer a shared experience of what we might call the cosmic sublime, drawing human beings together to recall the vastness of space beyond our own finite planet. But the variety of human responses to comets throughout history, which also includes the tragic response of the Heaven’s Gate sect to Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997, offers a reminder of how the same conditions that can produce wonder and excitement can just as often elicit fear.

It’s this complexity of human responses to the arrival of bright comets, and related celestial experiences, that inspired my novel, Bright Objects—in which a comet not seen for over four thousand years visits a small town and begins to expose the fears, hopes and frailties of everyone in it. For protagonist Sylvia Knight, a recent widow intent on avenging her husband’s death, the comet reveals her longing for sublime experience and cosmic connection as a means of coming to terms with her grief, and as an escape from her isolation and existential anxiety. Through her encounters with the comet, she experiences the “exaltation” that Schopenhauer describes of the vastness that exists in the universe, in space and time, beyond her own life.

Yet, like others around her—not least the astronomer who discovered the comet, and a local meditation teacher who believes it’s a divine sign—Sylvia must also contend with the defamiliarization of mundane existence that such celestial experience can entail. As she questions the boundaries between reality and illusion in both her internal universe and in the world outside, the all-encompassing awe that Burke refers to is never far from her mind—as is the understanding that the comet she is viewing with her own eyes in 1997 is the same one that must have been seen millennia before her by the ancient Egyptians.

Will 2024 herald the next real bright comet? Only time will tell. But even when comets disappoint, they reveal truths about our fears and hopes, and about the epoch in which we live. Comet Kohoutek, tagged “the flop of the century,” yielded not only insights for science, but also a festival, concert, and multiple songs in its honor—a testament, perhaps, to the fondness of many artists for underdogs. “Like Kohutek, you were gone” goes the wistful refrain of a song by R.E.M., titled after the comet, and which recalls in its plainness the way that comets always return us to time.

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Bright Objects by Ruby Todd is available from Simon & Schuster.