dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd) (01/08/85)
An artist painted a picture of Comet Halley centuries before the comet was named. More -- in a moment. January 8 Comet Halley and Giotto de Bordone Around the year 1304 the Italian artist Giotto de Bordone painted a portrait of Comet Halley. Giotto didn't know the comet he had seen was Halley's. The comet wouldn't begin to be called by that name until another four centuries had passed. Giotto saw Comet Halley around the time of its closest approach to the sun in 1301. Three years later Giotto painted a remarkable series of frescoes depicting the life of Jesus in a chapel in Padua -- and portrayed a comet over the stable in the nativity scene. The use of a starlike object was not uncommon in such paintings in the middle ages -- when the western church taught that any unusual celestial sight was a sign of an earthly event. But earlier pictures of comets -- like all mediaeval art -- were stylized, unnatural-looking representations. For example, a comet would be shown as a multi-pointed star with with extra long rays to one side. Giotto painted a more realistic image of the luminous coma that surrounds the comet's head -- with a tail streaming away from the sun. His innovative style of realism had an extraordinary influence on western art. Another Giotto will provide new images of Comet Halley next year. This Giotto is a spacecraft that will pass near the comet and photograph it as it returns once again to visit the sun. The European Space Agency named their Halley space mission Giotto in honor of the Italian painter -- one of the greatest early examples of people who have contemplated celestial objects -- and been inspired to record what they see. Script by Diana Hadley. (c) Copyright 1984, 1985 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin