50 Mr. Hind on the expected Reappeaj-ance of 



IX. On the expected Reappearance of the celebrated Comet of 

 1264. and 1556. By Mr. Hind*. 



'^I'^HE time is now near at hand when the return of the comet 

 -*- of 1264) and 1556, signalised by Mr. Dunthorne and M. 

 Pingre, may be expected to take place. It is therefore de- 

 sirable that observers should be in possession of everything 

 that may tend to facilitate their search for the comet ; and 1 

 venture to communicate to the Society the results of some re- 

 cent calculations of my own on the subject, preceded by a very 

 brief view of the principal circumstances connected with former 

 appearances of the comet, and a short notice of calculations 

 already published. 



"The great and celebrated comet" of 1264, as Pingre 

 terms it, is mentioned by nearly all the European historians 

 of the time, and was observed by the astronomers of the dy- 

 nasties then reigning in the north and south of China. It is 

 described as presenting a most imposing appearance, with a 

 tail 100° in length, stretching from the east part of the " mid- 

 heaven." The comet was of "surprising magnitude," far 

 exceeding any remembered by those who beheld it. Contem- 

 porary writers generally considered it the precursor of the 

 death of Pope Urban IV., and many of them relate that it 

 disappeared on the same night that the pope died, or on Oc- 

 tober 2 ; thus, in the words of Thierri de Vaucouleurs, 

 " Quo (Urbano) moriente, velut mortem cognosceret ejus, 

 Apparens minime Stella comata fuit." 



In 1556 the appearance of the comet was not on the same 

 scale of splendour as in 1264, but still was sufficiently imposing 

 to call forth from historians the epithets "ingens et lucidum 

 sidus." It was observed by Paul Fabricius, a mathematician 

 and physician at the court of the emperor Charles V. of Au- 

 stria. M. Pingre, the celebrated cometographer, sought in vain 

 for the original observations; the only information he could find 

 on the subject was contained in a small rough chart found in 

 Lycosthenes and other authors. I have before f suggested the 

 probability that these observations were given by Fabricius in 

 his work upon the comet, published at Niirnberg in 1556, and 

 mentioned by Lalande in his Bibliographic ; but, as far as I 

 am aware, tfiis work has not been discovered in any library. 

 M. Pingre would have at his command the splendid collec- 

 tions of St. Genevieve and the Royal Library at Paris ; and his 

 ineffectual search for the observations in these libraries makes 

 it at least doubtful whether they are now in existence. The 

 chart just mentioned enables us to form a tolerably definite 



* From the Proceedings of the Royal Astronomical Society, No. 14. 

 f Ast. Nach. 493. 



