Description:

Halley's Comet - 1759 Ames Almanack predicting the return of the comet identified by Edmond Halley, or Halley's Comet

Printed pamphlet: Ames's Almanack for 1759, picturing "the Path of the remarkable Comet expected this Year"I (later called "Halley's Comet"), 24 pages, 4" x 6.5", Boston: 1759, Printed and Sold by Draper, Green & Russell, & Fleet.

A 2.75" by 2.5" diagram of "The Solar System" on the cover page depicts six planets orbiting the Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter & 4 Moons, and Saturn & 5 Moons and a comet. A letter from publisher Nathaniel Ames, dated September 15, 1758, on page two begins: "Kind Reader, I Here present you with my Thirty-fourth Almanack published. Although a Perhaps, with Justice, might always be added to what I say of the Weather, yet I have collected the best Rules that Experience has taught me in that Affair, from the Aspects and Configurations of the Planets: I am therefore constantly obliged to trace the rambling Moon, and wandering Planets, in all their intricate Paths, which costs me much Labour and hard Study...."

Three pages are devoted to the Solar System with one full page describing comets. Ames also includes the orbit of "the Path of the remarkable Comet expected this Year". In 1705 English astronomer Edmond Halley (1656-1742) applying historical astronomy methods, published Synopsis Astronomia Cometicae, which stated his belief that the comet sightings of 1456, 1531, 1607, and 1682 related to the same comet, which he predicted would return in 1758. When it did it became generally known as Halley's Comet. Halley did not live to see the comet's return, having died in 1742.

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