Summary
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss comets, the 'dirty snowballs' of the Solar System. In the early 18th century the Astronomer Royal Sir Edmond Halley compiled a list of appearances of comets, bright objects like stars with long tails which are occasionally visible in the night sky. He concluded that many of these apparitions were in fact the same comet, which returns to our skies around every 75 years, and whose reappearance he correctly predicted. Halley's Comet is today the best known example of a comet, a body of ice and dust which orbits the Sun. Since they contain materials from the time when the Solar System was formed, comets are regarded by scientists as frozen time capsules, with the potential to reveal important information about the early history of our planet and others.
With:
Monica Grady Professor of Planetary and Space Sciences at the Open University
Paul Murdin Senior Fellow at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge
Don Pollacco Professor of Astronomy at the University of Warwick
Producer: Thomas Morris.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
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| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time. |
| 0:38.7 | For more details about in our time and for our terms of use please go to BBC.co. UK slash radio for. I hope you enjoy |
| 0:45.9 | the program. Hello one evening in April 837 a strange new star was spotted in the skies above Northern Europe. It was |
| 0:54.8 | exceptionally bright and had a mysterious long tail. Louis the Pius, King of |
| 0:59.5 | the Franks, became convinced that it was a portent of his own death. He wasn't the only |
| 1:03.6 | one to be worried. A scholar in Iraq recorded that this fiery apparition |
| 1:07.6 | caused widespread terror, while in China the Emperor summoned his |
| 1:11.2 | astronomer royal to demand an explanation. |
| 1:14.0 | The object that caused so much consternation was Halley's Comet, |
| 1:17.0 | a small body of dust and ice which orbits the sun and is visible from Earth about every 75 years. |
| 1:22.0 | Famously it appeared in 1066 just before |
| 1:25.1 | the Roman invasion and it was most recently seen in 1986. Comets are some of the most spectacular |
| 1:31.1 | objects in the night sky but are rarely visible to the naked eye, |
| 1:34.6 | although two unusually bright comets are forecast for later this year. |
| 1:38.4 | So where do comments come from? |
| 1:40.2 | What do they consist of? |
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