Passage of a Comet

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Memory spaces · Year: 1618

The Italian military engineer Próspero Casola (Reggio Emilia, 1565 – Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1647), assigned to the Islands and resident there for more than five decades, recorded in his writings the passage across the sky of Las Palmas, on 16 November 1618, of what he called a comet star .

According to his description, between 3 and 4 in the morning of that day, towards the east, a white vapour with a very long tail appeared in the city’s sky. The engineer precisely noted that the astronomical phenomenon emerged on the horizon when the Sun was in Capricorn at seventeen degrees.

Casola echoed that the appearance of comets in the sky was interpreted in the 17th century as an ill omen presaging catastrophes and terrible events. It was supposed that these stars came from the planet Saturn, whose link with the titan Cronos (who devoured his children) connected it with the harshest face of time: decay, ageing, and the end of cycles. Therefore, it was associated with misfortunes, famines, and the colour black.

Indeed, the appearance of at least three comets in the skies of Europe and the Canary Islands in the autumn of 1618 (the one on 16 November seems to have been the most spectacular) distressed the population. Visible to the naked eye, these sightings coincided with the start of the Thirty Years’ War, and many saw confirmation of the bad omens.

The comets of 1618 were the first to be observed with a telescope by scientists. These astronomers studied their trajectories for months. From 1619, publications by several authors (Kepler, Grazzi, and Galileo) analysed the event, initiating a scientific and philosophical controversy of such proportions that it influenced modern thought forever.

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