From the Spring and Autumn Annals entry of Duke Wen 14 (613 BC) onward, Chinese official histories continuously recorded 31 returns of Halley's Comet without omission, detailing tail length, direction, color, and trajectory. The New Book of Tang records that in 837 AD the comet's tail "stretched across the sky." In 1705, Halley himself used Chinese and Western records together to calculate the comet's period and predict its 1758 return.
Account
From the Spring and Autumn Annals entry of Duke Wen 14 (613 BC) onward, Chinese official histories continuously recorded 31 returns of Halley's Comet without omission, detailing tail length, direction, color, and trajectory. The New Book of Tang records that in 837 AD the comet's tail "stretched across the sky." In 1705, Halley himself used Chinese and Western records together to calculate the comet's period and predict its 1758 return.
Sources
- Spring and Autumn Annals
- Records of the Grand Historian, "Treatise on the Celestial Offices"
- Book of Han
- astronomical treatises of subsequent dynasties
- Halley, A Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets