APOD: The Great Comet of 1680 Over Rotterdam (2013 Oct 28)

[APOD Robot]

The Great Comet of 1680 Over Rotterdam

Explanation: Was there ever another comet like ISON? Although no two comets are exactly alike, one that appears to have had notable similarities was Comet Kirch, the Great Comet of 1680. Like approaching Comet ISON, Comet Kirch was a bright sungrazer, making a very close approach to the surface of the Sun. Neither comet, coincidently, is a member of the most common group of sungrazers -- the Kreutz group -- populated by remnants of a comet that disintegrated near the Sun hundreds of years ago. The long tail of Comet Kirch is depicted in the above painting by Lieve Versheier. As pictured, some members of the foreground crowd of Rotterdam in the Netherlands are holding cross-staffs, an angle measuring device that predated the sextant. No one knows how Comet ISON will develop, but like Comet Kirch, it is expected to be brightest when very near the Sun, in ISON's case during last few days of November.

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[geckzilla]

Wonder what that spot in Rotterdam looks like now if you go there and snap a photo?

[owlice]

Could probably Google for a street view!

[geckzilla]

Sure, if I had any idea where in Rotterdam to check. There's a few places it could be just from looking at a satellite view. No clue how much it's changed since then.

[BMAONE23]

The church steeple on the left in this 1900's image is really similar to the one on the right in the painting. Like the painting locale is on a bridge crossing at the tower and the 1900 image is alother bridge facing that direction.

Click to view full size image

Edit to repair 404 error

and express beyond thanks

[Beyond]

Got a 404 on your picture, BMAONE23.

[Nitpicker]

This image from 1940 could possibly show the same church (Grote of Sint-Laurenskerk) as seen on the RHS of the painting:

Click to view full size image

But, having located the church on Google Maps, I really couldn't say where the artist must have been located, to be looking roughly south-ish at the comet, with the church on the right. The photo certainly shows how much Rotterdam has changed. Quite sobering.

[Beyond]

This image from 1940 could possibly show the same church (Grote of Sint-Laurenskerk) as seen on the RHS of the painting:

Click to view full size image

But, having located the church on Google Maps, I really couldn't say where the artist must have been located, to be looking roughly south-ish at the comet, with the church on the right. The photo certainly shows how much Rotterdam has changed. Quite sobering.

The tower part looks the same. IF it's the same church, then the APOD view is from the left, while your 1940 view is from the right.

[Nitpicker]

The tower part looks the same. IF it's the same church, then the APOD view is from the left, while your 1940 view is from the right.

It is possible that the artist was standing somewhere around where Rotterdam Blaak railway station stands today. The railway line (now underground) was originally built as a viaduct, but before that it could conceivably have been a canal (or similar) as shown in the painting. All speculation of course ... I've never been to Rotterdam.

It is possible that the viaduct is the thing we can see passing behind the church in the 1940 photo, and if so, the two images would be from almost opposite directions.

Edit: The canal-like-thing in the foreground of the photo, could have once extended to as far as where the viaduct is in the photo. This could be the waterway in the painting (looking in opposite direction).

[Beyond]

Well, IF it is the same church, it's lost a lot of itself, and landscape around it. So... your picture could even be the backside, as compared to the APOD one. Maybe finding an earlier picture or painting would help.

[Nitpicker]

So... your picture could even be the backside, as compared to the APOD one.

That's what I said.

The church is now restored ... you can see it on Google Maps.

[Ann]

This is a very fascinating old painting. Thanks to APOD for showing it to us!

Note that the onlookers cast shadows on the ground. Where does the light come from? Well, from the comet, of course. Note that all the houses and buildings are dark.

There also appears to be snow on the ground. I checked the Wikipedia article on the Great Comet of 1680, and it appears that the comet reached its peak brightness on December 29 that year. Okay, the date makes the snow unsurprising.

Alpha Persei Moving Group

I tried to identify the stars, and the elongated grouping at about 2 o'clock looks a bit like the Alpha Persei Moving Group. But the rest of the stars don't look like they belong to Perseus or any neighbouring constellations, so I guess we are looking at a bit of artistic license.

I'm wondering at the "blood red sky". Are we looking at a dusk-red sky? Maybe, but the colors don't look right for that. A sky that red should be misty or somewhat cloudy, but this sky looks clear. (How else could we see the comet so clearly?)

Could it be that this sky has been painted "hellishly red" to suggest that the comet is an awful omen predicting some calamity, maybe even the end of the world? Perhaps they still believed that comets were scary omens back in 1680.

Ann

[Nitpicker]

Ann, I think we are looking WSW, shortly after sunset. The comet would have been near the Sun at that time.

[Nitpicker]

This is what I think it might look like in more recent times:

[FloridaMike]

You guys are amazing. Thanks KNitPicker.

[neufer]

[b][color=#0000FF]A view in Rotterdam with Grote of Sint-Laurenskerk (ca 1660)[/color][/b]

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[b][color=#0000FF]Blaak depot & Grote of Sint-Laurenskerk after Luftwaffe aerial bombardment[/color][/b]

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<<Grote of Sint-Laurenskerk (English: Great, or St. Lawrence church) is a Protestant church in Rotterdam. It is the only remnant of the medieval city of Rotterdam. The church was built between 1449 and 1525. In 1621 a wooden spire was added to the tower, designed by Hendrick de Keyser. Poor quality of its wood caused the spire to be demolished in 1645. A stone cube was added to the tower, which proved too heavy for the foundation in 1650. New piles were driven under the tower and in 1655 the tower stood straight again.

This basilica was the first all stone building in Rotterdam. Many important events took place here. The last priest of the Laurenkerk was Hubertus Duifhuis. The Reformation took place in 1572 and the Laurenskerk became a Protestant church. Ministers of the church include Laurens Johannes Jacobus van Oosterzee, Abraham Hellenbroek, Jan Scharp and J.R. Callenbach, who wrote a book about the history of the church a few years before the Rotterdam Blitz. The church is still used for worship of the Protestant Church.

In the Rotterdam Blitz on May 14, 1940 the Laurenskerk was heavily damaged. At first there were calls to demolish the church, but that was stopped by the Germans. The provisional National Monuments Commission had both supporters and opponents of restoration. In particular, committee member and architect J.J.P. Oud opposed rebuilding in 1950 and presented an alternative plan which would preserve only the tower. Next to the memorial a new, smaller church would be built. This alternative plan was rejected, particularly because restoration of the Laurenskerk was viewed as a symbol of the resilience of Rotterdam's community. In 1952, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands laid the foundation stone for the restoration, which was completed in 1968.>>

[Spif]

I followed the Comet ISON link and there's a nice nutshell summary of what is known so far. There's a nice video about sungrazer comets.

So, apparently, this is the first time this comet has passed through the system! Even more crazy, this comet is expected to escape the system completely. One pass and nobody will ever see it again.

Wow... Apparently the estimated initiating event out in the Oort clout occurred some 10k years ago.

So what I'm wondering is, what are the odds? Whatever nudged this comet initially must have been pretty severe to divert it from a presumably stable orbit way out there and subsequently aim it almost directly at the sun? That must have been a huge deflection.

So, basically, this is confirmation that things from outside our foreseeable knowledge zone can suddenly whiz by us any time.

This comet was spotted one year ago, about a billion kilometers out. If we ever spot one like that on a course for Earth, there wouldn't be much we could do about it. Odds are extremely low that a comet would nail us straight on in any given pass, but still... Jupiter has eaten a couple just in the past decade!

-s

[Chris Peterson]

So what I'm wondering is, what are the odds? Whatever nudged this comet initially must have been pretty severe to divert it from a presumably stable orbit way out there and subsequently aim it almost directly at the sun? That must have been a huge deflection.

Not sure what you mean by "what are the odds". There may be billions of bodies in the Oort cloud, so the chance that any one of them will be perturbed into the inner system is small. But such perturbations are common, happening every few years. So in that sense, the odds are high.

Bodies that distance from the Sun are bound only very lightly. While their orbits may be seen as stable, they need only the slightest perturbation- just a few meters per second- to reach escape velocity. Nothing more than a close pass from another small body, a chance positioning of the planets, or even the position of a nearby star can be enough to generate the necessary delta-v. So these bodies are very easily deflected into highly eccentric orbits that pass close to the Sun. It isn't a large deflection at all.

This comet was spotted one year ago, about a billion kilometers out. If we ever spot one like that on a course for Earth, there wouldn't be much we could do about it. Odds are extremely low that a comet would nail us straight on in any given pass, but still... Jupiter has eaten a couple just in the past decade!

It is objects like this that will always represent the big risk for Earth. We know where all the really dangerous asteroids are, and are steadily detecting smaller and smaller ones. Very soon we will be able to predict any possible asteroid collisions, and with enough advance warning to do something about it. But a non-periodic comet is a problem. It might not be detected even a year early, as it could only be visible in the daytime sky (although with space detection, we could get more warning). But even with a few years advance warning, that's just not enough to be able to do anything.

[geckzilla]

So what I'm wondering is, what are the odds? Whatever nudged this comet initially must have been pretty severe to divert it from a presumably stable orbit way out there and subsequently aim it almost directly at the sun? That must have been a huge deflection.

I've read somewhere that it only takes small perturbations to nudge a comet. Given that Oort cloud material must be in very tenuous orbits, it makes sense that a small change could have dramatic consequences for it over thousands of years.

edit: Whoops, Chris really beat me to that one.

[Pode]

I noticed the linear streak to the right of the bright tail. In the past it might have been interpretted as an extra line or an abortive first pass at the tail by Verschuier. I have to wonder if he was actually trrying to depict the ion tail of the comet. The angle of the line compared to the curve of the tail seems wrong but that could be a trick of the viewing angle. Perhaps someone with the software could check to see if this is a possibility.

[Cwrwda]

The stars to the left of the comet remind me of Auriga, although they wouldn't have been off to the WSW in Dec at sunset

[Cousin Ricky]

Perhaps they still believed that comets were scary omens back in 1680.

No doubt. This was a few years before Isaac Newton published his Principia, and the idea that the heavens obeyed the same natural laws as the Earth was still a radical notion. Edmund Halley did not establish comets as law-abiding natural phenomena until 1705.

Heck, there are people even today, in the 21st century, who believe that the positions of the stars and planets at the time of your birth can influence the course of your life.

[geckzilla]

I've noticed people asking questions (not at Asterisk) about ISON who are concerned about cyanogen from it somehow reaching Earth. Over 100 years ago, Earth passed directly through the tail of comet Halley and one lonely comment about the presence of cyanogen first initiated this fear and ever since, despite it being soundly debunked, the idea persists today. It's almost unbelievable to me how nonsense gets perpetuated.

[Chris Peterson]

I've noticed people asking questions (not at Asterisk) about ISON who are concerned about cyanogen from it somehow reaching Earth. Over 100 years ago, Earth passed directly through the tail of comet Halley and one lonely comment about the presence of cyanogen first initiated this fear and ever since, despite it being soundly debunked, the idea persists today. It's almost unbelievable to me how nonsense gets perpetuated.

Most people entertain a variety of nonsensical beliefs, and are trivially persuaded to adopt crazy ideas. Many of the world's problems stem from this innate credulity.

[Anthony Barreiro]

If we're looking southwest during evening dusk on Saturday 28 December, 1680, the light of the Moon, approaching first quarter, would account for the shadows on the snow-covered ground. The comet is conjuncting Venus! (This conjunction might account for the popularity of cross-staffs). The stars don't match up very well, but maybe Verschuier just put some random stars in for effect. According to his wikipedia article he was known for painting ships and landscapes, maybe he just wasn't very careful about creating a star chart.

Edited after I realized the moonlight would make a dawn scene unlikely.