Halley's Comet

Hello. Can you see me. I’m the sparkly traveler with a long, glowing tail, zipping through the night sky. I’m not a star or a planet. I’m Halley's Comet, a big, cosmic snowball made of ice, dust, and rock. I spend most of my time way out in the cold, dark parts of space, but every once in a while, I make a long journey to swing by and say hello to the Sun and your beautiful planet, Earth. For thousands of years, people have looked up and wondered, 'What is that amazing streak of light?'. Before they knew my name, they just knew I was something special and mysterious, a visitor from the stars.

For a very, very long time, people would see me and feel a little scared. They didn't know what I was. As far back as the year 240 BCE, astronomers in China wrote down when they saw me soaring across the sky. Much later, in the year 1066, people in England saw me right before a big battle and even stitched a picture of me into a giant cloth story called the Bayeux Tapestry. For centuries, everyone thought a new, different comet appeared each time I visited. But then, a clever man named Edmond Halley came along. In the early 1700s, he read all the old stories about my visits. He used math to figure out my path and realized it was not a different visitor each time—it was always me. He predicted I would come back around December 25th, 1758. And guess what. I did. To honor him for solving my big mystery, people started calling me Halley's Comet.

Now, people are not scared when I visit. They get excited. My last visit was in 1986, and scientists sent little robot spaceships, like one called Giotto, to fly right up to me and take pictures. They learned I have a dark, lumpy center, like a cosmic potato. It was so exciting to have visitors of my own. I will not be back for a while—you can look for me in the sky around the year 2061. I love that I remind people to look up at the amazing, giant universe we all share. So keep your eyes on the stars, and maybe one day, you’ll wave hello to me as I fly by on my journey.