fortune and no other comet has been so maligned as that named after the 17th century scientist Edmund Halley.
This is the story of Halley's comet, once again in our skies on its 76 year journey around the solar system.
It's also the story of our personal hunt for the elusive comet and of the strange nocturnal habits of the astronomer.
In 1910 on its last visit, comet Halley came so close that its tail swept across the earth.
But ragtime and good times did nothing to dispel the fear and superstition.
New Zealander George Kelly was eight years old and a very frightened little boy when he saw the comet in Invercargill.
There was a general prediction, publicised to a great extent in the newspapers and talked about everywhere about the world would end on a certain day.
And of course we as children were really terrified about this. My father of course laughed it off but I did feel that my mother was really quite apprehensive about it.
And in knots at the school children were all the time talking about it.
Panic was worldwide. People suspected the comet's tail was full of cyanide gas.
Modern science has revealed there is cyanide in the tail but in such minute quantities that it's harmless.
In 1910 King Edward VII died for the doomsayers fulfilling the belief that comets heralded the death of kings and emperors.
These superstitions reach far back in time. The Chinese were avid comet watchers and they too connected comets and misfortune.
Their records suggest they saw Halley's Comet way back in 240 BC.
One of the most famous depictions of Halley's Comet is on the Bay of Tapestry.
The comet was seen in 1066 over the battlefield at Hastings. King Harold of England thought it was a bad omen. He was right.
He died in battle killed by a Norman arrow in the eye.
But there are some like Edith Edwards who remember the 1910 apparition with wonder.
It was 1910 and I was 12 years old and we were taken down to the promenade in Sandam out of white and there we waited for the comet to arrive.
It was great excitement because there was such a lot of people all coming onto the promenade.
And presently we saw this lovely light came right across the sky and over the sea right this beautiful big ball.
It was like a big ball and a long tail with a brilliant light right around it.
And we gasped in amazement and it came right over the bay and gracefully faded away.
This time around the comet is appearing in the space age.
Superstition has for the most part been sent packing.
The other thing I should tell you about the comet is you all know that it's been a bit of cold summer and it's rained lots.
Nothing to do with the comet.
And Mr Marcos has lost power.
Nothing to do with the comet.
Well Paul Harding is a professional astronomer putting the line you'd expect.
But even those with a vested interest maintaining the myths are surprisingly down to earth about this visit.
It's a very good morning to Bridget. How are you?
I'm fine. How are you?
Tell me what's this?
That sounds like Halley's Comet.
Canberra astrologer Bridget is not convinced the comet will have any disastrous consequences.
Well I think we've got to sort of be honest here although it obviously may bring in upheavals and revolutions.
Those anyway are going on and I think that while we're putting so much money into arms there's always going to be fighting.
So we can't blame poor old Halley's Comet for everything.
In the 80s science is taking the place of superstition and Australia is at the forefront of astronomical science.
Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales is one of two run by the Australian National University.
The second is at Mount Stromlo in Canberra.
During its closest approach to Earth the comet will only be visible in the southern hemisphere.
Astronomers from all over the world will converge on Siding Spring this month for a ringside seat at the Comet Halley Show.
Here the skies are said to be among the clearest in the southern hemisphere and the array of astronomical instruments
including the state of the art 2.3 metre telescope are among the best in the world.
But all the science in the known universe wasn't helping our attempts to obtain videotape of Halley
despite the assistance of Australia's leading astronomers.
The comet was rising before dawn.
We joined the astronomers in their early morning watch but the clearest skies in the southern hemisphere were obscured by cloud.
Our 4am vigil had been for nothing. We should have heeded the omen.
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It's 4am and Siding Spring Research Officer Vince Ford is already up and about.
Not unusual, he says, for astronomers, most of whom rise after lunch
and start work when the rest of us are putting our feet up.
He knows the comet is somewhere in the southeast, but cloud and the light of a full moon have obscured it.
Even the 16 inch telescope can't find it.
Students from the Japanese Amateur Astronomical Association have set up here at the observatory.
They're making a video of the comet using the latest in Japanese photographic technology.
But this morning, moonlight and cloud have thwarted all attempts to take pictures.
Japanese technology was stumped and our cameras didn't stand a chance.
The astronomers are excited though.
Comet Halley ran to the sun in February and it's looking better than first predicted.
The comet's developed quite a beautiful tail.
Long streamers, a fan shape coming from the head of it around here.
At the tail you can see places where the tail is detached from the head.
This detachment is due to fluctuations in the solar wind,
the particles that stream out from the sun and actually form the tails.
So it's looking very pretty at the moment.
It'll get much prettier.
It's moving away from the sun towards us.
That means it'll get bigger on the sky.
And I would suspect by April it's going to stretch 20 degrees,
maybe a quarter of the distance across the sky.
As the comet passed behind the sun at the beginning of February,
there was a series of massive solar flares, the biggest in 60 years.
The extra energy from those flares has gone into the head of the comet,
boiled off more material, made a bigger and thicker and much brighter coma.
So it's better.
But despite the optimism, Vince Ford stresses that comets are unpredictable.
As quickly as this one improved, so it might fade.
This time the comet is more than 62 million kilometres away from Earth.
That makes this visit the worst in 1500 years.
Edmund Halley would have had a better view in 1682.
Halley discovered the comet was periodic, that it returned on average every 76 years.
He predicted the comet that he'd seen in 1682 would return in 1758.
It did, but he didn't see it.
He died about 16 years earlier.
Today we have the technology to take us closer to the comet than Halley would ever have dreamed.
Dirty snowball is the best guess of what a comet looks like.
It was the best guess before these observations of Halley,
and it's still holding pretty good.
Comets, the centre part of them, are a loose packed mess of ice, snow and stray bits of dust and gravel.
As I say, just leftovers, material that never made it into a planet.
Now when the comet gets in about the orbit of Mars,
it's soaking up enough energy from the sun for the gas to start to boil out.
The ice melts and the centre part of the comet,
which is roughly about 10 kilometres in diameter, say for a big one like Halley,
it gets surrounded by this shell of boiled out fluorescent superheated steam.
That's about what it is.
So you get a 10 kilometre snowball in the centre here.
Surrounding it, this bright region you can see here, is this shell of superheated fluorescent steam
that's a couple of hundred thousand kilometres in diameter.
When the comet's a bit further in towards the sun, the radiation pressure from the sun,
and particularly the solar wind, that's sort of a stream of particles that blows out from the sun in all directions,
hitting that coma around the comet, blows the tail back,
strips particles out of the coma and just streams it back away from the sun.
The tail can stretch up to hundreds of millions of kilometres in length.
I would guess, going by the way that Halley's performing at the moment,
that it could grow a tail that to our eye looks about 20 degrees long,
covering somewhere between a quarter and a third of the sky in a dirty great streak.
Comet research is coordinated by International Halley Watch, which has its headquarters in California.
Australia's the place to be.
Australia has got a better arsenal of astronomical instruments than any other country in the world.
Couple that with the fact that when it's at its best Halley is only visible in the southern hemisphere.
You know, we're sitting on a winner here.
So we'll be doing simple things like measuring the position of the comet accurately,
the brightness and density fluctuations in the comet,
photographs to show the structure in the head and the tail of the comet,
and complete detailed physical and chemical analysis of the thing.
In fact, by the time this is out beyond the orbit of Mars again,
we'll probably know more about Halley's comet than any other astronomical object ever.
We left our cameras trying to get a shot of the comet at Siding Spring.
Let's see how they're going at Mount Stromlo.
In astronomical circles, Canberra skies in February and March are notoriously bad.
Cloudy nights are par for the course.
So another four o'clock start and no comet to be seen.
The moonlight didn't help.
But this time we know what we're looking for.
We've seen it through binoculars, faint behind the cirrus,
but showing a fine feathery tail.
Once again though, anticipation turns to disappointment,
and we begin to think we're attempting the impossible.
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British Comet expert Ken Russell sends data from the UK Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring
to the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany.
From a scientific point of view this is going to be Bonanza.
We have five spacecraft which will be going past the comet.
Two Soviet Vega spacecraft have already flown within 10,000 kilometres of the comet.
These pictures are from Vega.
They show the comet's nucleus, the first time it's ever been seen.
The Japanese have successfully negotiated a similar passage with their Planet A spacecraft.
And the European Space Agency, using information provided by these passes,
will bring its satellite Geoto within 500 kilometres of the comet on March the 13th,
sending it right through the coma.
All the data will be transmitted back to Earth via the CSIRO radio telescope at Parks in New South Wales,
backed up with another at Tipimbilla in the ACT.
The Geoto spacecraft is a bit unusual in that unlike most other spacecraft
it doesn't store anything on board.
It sends it all back straight away and the reason for that is fairly obvious.
It's going in where the gravels fly and thick and no one really expects it to survive.
In 1910 some of the best information about Halley's Comet was obtained by amateur astronomers
and casual observers who saw the comet and made accurate sketches.
Here at the Dixon Tradesman's Union Club the Canberra Astronomical Society has set up two telescopes
in a bid to encourage stargazing.
It hopes to have a third up and running by the end of March.
There's great public interest, not just in Halley but in the stars generally.
But Society President Peter Williamson says telescopes shouldn't be necessary for a good view of the comet.
Well really, let's be honest, if you're going to look at the comet with a telescope
you're only going to see detail in the nucleus, alright?
It's not going to be much fun, you won't see the tail at all unless you're using binoculars
and I think even then you'll only get three quarters of it or half of it even.
So it's really, you need a dark sky sight and naked eye.
Scattered light from our cities is a big problem for serious sky watching.
It blots out the stars.
The Society has asked the Department of Territories to turn off Canberra's lights
during the peak viewing times in April, as other cities are doing.
Negotiations are incomplete and so far the lights remain switched on.
Scattered light was now proving a problem for us.
From Mount Stromlo we'd moved to the bush.
Like their professional counterparts amateur astronomers are night owls.
By day Peter Williamson is a music teacher, Dave Herald a public servant.
A good viewing spot is well away from city lights and industrial pollution
on a clear night with no moon.
Here in Canberra the Sawa Road, about 25 kilometres out of town, seemed ideal.
Or it would have been if it hadn't been for the moon.
Eureka.
Oh I can see it now right through all the glare stuff.
Is that right?
Yes.
Through the cloud.
Coming out of the cloud.
Top stuff.
They're lovely, fan shaped tail on it.
I'm very impressed.
Well they can see it but our camera can't.
A better time to look for it will be from now until March the 20th
and from April the 7th to the 16th when it will be at its brightest.
In early April a comet will appear from about 10 o'clock.
Here's how to find it.
Facing south look for the Southern Cross which will be high in the sky ahead.
The Milky Way stretches across the sky from southeast to the west.
Now look a little lower to the southeast for the constellation Scorpius.
It's shaped like a scorpion or fish hook.
On April the 1st the comet will appear just below the fish hook.
A week later it will have moved to a position above the pointer to the Southern Cross.
This will be a good time to look for the comet.
There's virtually no moon and the skies will be relatively dark.
From April the 15th the moon will be reaching its fullest
and moonlight will blot out the comet.
Until April the 24th.
On this date there's a total eclipse of the moon beginning at 8 and ending at midnight.
This will be your last chance to see Comet Halley until the year 2061.
Meanwhile back at the Sawa Road we see the comet through binoculars.
It really is superb.
I mean it's so much brighter than what I remember here in December.
It's got a lot brighter hasn't it?
It is brighter and the tail is far clearer.
Yeah I reckon.
Well the astronomers have seen it but we still don't have the pictures.
So for now you'll just have to use your imagination.
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The Japanese have taken to Halley's Comet in a big way.
Here at Coonabarabran not far from Siding Spring the Japanese amateur astronomical association has its centre.
The project is sponsored by the computer giant NEC.
Information about the comet's position is relayed daily to NEC's Comet Halley Information Centre in Tokyo.
Keen Japanese observers have a problem.
The comet can't be seen in the Northern Hemisphere so thousands are already on their way to Australia.
Japanese television has already devoted many hours to the comet Coonabarabran and Siding Spring.
But there's a fine line between publicising the comet and its exploitation.
For those with money to burn the most stylish way to see the comet will be from the first class lounge of the Concorde.
A ticket will set you back about $9,200 though.
Less expensive but equally as effective ansets Comet Chaser flights.
An hour in the night skies above the clouds in especially darkened aircraft is expected to provide the experience of a lifetime.
The closest to outer space that most of us could ever hope to be.
There's no shortage of mementos.
The book, the t-shirt, the silver spoon, the stamps, the icy pole, Bill Halley and the comets.
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And I'm sure that Comet Halley will be very surprised at the change in Canberra since her last visit 76 years ago.
It might be the pragmatic 80s but the comet hasn't lost its grip on the imagination as scientific reaction clearly shows.
Soviet scientists have excitedly announced that photographs from the Vega space probes show the comet to have a double nucleus.
The Nine Nation team which launched the probes says the information collected from the Vega passes has been a major step forward in our understanding of comet behaviour.
But what of Australia where astronomy has focused on the outer edges of our universe and where Halley's comet, confined as it is to the solar system, is almost in our backyard.
Well I've got excited about it anyway and I think most of us have.
This time last year if you'd asked me that question I'd have said no comets are not particularly interesting things.
But the more you learn about them the more fascinating they become.
I think just the thought that comets are a left over bit of our very remote past and that the chemicals in there are the chemicals that went to make up our earth, our sun and ultimately you and me.
That's a kind of mind boggling thought.
We really are studying comet Halley, we're studying our chemical history of four and a half billion years ago.
I find that incredibly interesting.
I think it's one of the great achievements of the Hawke government and oh no I think it's a great opportunity.
I'm glad to be the Minister when it's all happening and I think people will get a sense of excitement of just what an extraordinary universe we live in.
I can't see a thing. I can't see it.
Come on cloud go go go.
In late February comet Halley could only be seen in the morning skies before sunrise.
With a little help from Mount Stromlo we found it low in the sky over suburban Canberra.
Its fan shaped tail spread out before it like a peacock's display.
A stately procession through the constellation of Capricorn.
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