SEEING HALLEY'S COMET IN 1910

Hans Kalmus recalls

the last appearance of the comet

WHEN I was a child in Austrian Prague, before the first war, the seasons were still orderly. Days were long in summer, as they are today. However in those days there were no strawberries in January and in August no skating. A safe circle carried one through the year from the summer holidays, through the fruit market in the autumn to the Christmas tree and again into the warmth of spring. In June, I could be sure, there would be cherries, bright red ones for eating and dark ones in cakes; my father would take me swimming in the river; and one evening there would be fireworks in honour of the 'Saint on the Bridge', St John of Nepomuk.

My story starts in 1909 on the first St John's day I can remember, remember more vividly than many later events. In the afternoon things had been unusually lively in the park on Charles Square and I must have gathered that there was to be some- thing special happening in the evening. I begged to be allowed to take part and this request was granted.

As my father, a doctor, was very busy and my mother not fond of crowds it fell to the servants to take me out. Thus long after bedtime I tramped between the cook Mrs Mushikova and the maid Jirina through the New Town to the embankment opposite Sophy's Island, then downstream past the National Theatre towards the Old Town Mills. On the familiar quay with the weir, the bridge, the castle and the cathed- ral in the background promenaded hun- dreds of people: soldiers and old men, boys and girls, grandmothers and children. Slowly it grew darker, colours faded, and from the boats on the river below the lights and lantFrns shone brighter. People now formed a wall — those in front leaning against the railings, so that I, a little boy, could no longer see what was going on on the river. The good-natured Jirina put me on her shoulders.

For a while nothing much happened. Then suddenly there was a hiss above the water and, emitting orange sparks, some- thing rose into the leaden sky, slowed down and then, only faintly glowing, fell gently into the depths. And before I could ask what that was, a second such thing rose from the same region into the gloom in a manner similar to the first, but even more

startling: for at the highest point of its track, amid loud detonations, it released clusters of red, blue and green stars, which slowly sinking and without any further noise vanished. 'Rackometle,' explained my companion — and as they knew little about such things, and as I, knowing only a small amount of Czech, did not understand what they said, that was it: rackometle. This was the word which the people of Prague used for fireworks.

After my fourth birthday, in the January of the following year, I ceased to be fed in the nursery. Seated at meal times at my parents' table I could listen to their talk: domestic affairs, probably the politics of Czechs and Germans in Bohemia, other news and novelties. And one such novelty was a thing, called a comet, which one could see moving through the nights and which had a shiny tail. It was, I thought, obviously a rackometle — rockets and comets, Raketen and Kometen, were the same, and I had to see this one.

Halley's comet had, like others of its kind, kindled the interest of the people; and not only interest but apprehension. Like 18th-century Paris, the Prague of 1910 produced its quota of charlatans and obscurantists, who darkly predicted the end of the world as the comet approached — and also astronomers and enlightened laymen, who spent a good deal of time trying to refute this nonsense.

On the evening of the day when it was finally reported that one would see the comet I crept out of bed onto the balcony and searched the sky for a rackometle: but there was nothing. When in the morning I complained at the breakfast table, my mother suggested that we might in the evening go to Charles Square and search the sky with her opera glasses, of which she was very proud. My father said that this might not be 'quite so simple', which surprised me, because what I had seen on the river bank had certainly been conspi- cuous. Why would one need an opera glass? However, my father had a better idea: among his patients was an assistant at the observatory.

Thus on a clear evening my father and I set out for the old Jesuit observatory. We walked, as I thought, in the right direction, to the river and embankment, where I had seen the fireworks, but continued past the familiar spot to a small square, formed by the river, a bridge tower, a church and the front of an old university building, the `Clementinum', housing the observatory.

At the place where Tycho Brahe and Kepler had made their observations, I was placed on a chair and made to look through a telescope aimed at the comet. It was my first great disappointment, and more im- portant a disappointment with science: all I saw among the other stars was one, not a particularly bright one, with a pale tail. It was quite unremarkable; it did not move and neither did it sparkle, hiss or explode. Seen with the naked eye it was just a miserable little thing. As a consolation I was then shown the mountains and seas on the moon and one or other of the planets, I forget which.

Rain and other circumstances prevented my seeing Halley's comet again in 1910 and it vanished for most of its observers for ever. I was told that it would return in 76 years and in spite of my disappointment I decided to try to see it again.

That rockets and comets are different things became, soon after my early dis- appointment, clear to my childish mind. But in the adult world Raketen and Kometen began to develop a startling new relationship. In about 1930 I saw on a colleague's desk pictures of moonscapes and in front of them long projectiles, models of moon rockets. Later I experi- enced the German rockets in London, saw the first Russian satellite in the evening sky and the first American on the television screen stepping on the moon. Now prepa- rations are made to shoot a rocket into Halley's comet.

Something has fundamentally changed. Before the first space rocket was fired, every stone, every inanimate object flung upwards has come down to Earth, as did my long-remembered rackometle. Not any more: hundreds of satellites are now orbit- ing and following the rules, formulated by Kepler and Newton, which govern the movements not only of the planets, but also of comets. A few rockets have even been sent into outer space on hyperbolic tracks, like 'escaping' comets.

Friends and family have participated in these developments: my colleague has helped to improve the propellants for space ships; one of my sons lectures on astrophysics and my grandchildren have seen moon dust under the microscope.

Even the days and seasons are no longer safe. With today's mail arrived proposals for biological experiments on the next European space vehicle. For the crew aboard days will only last minutes and winter or summer will not mean anything. It all seems far away from that summer's evening in Prague, 76 years ago. What will the world be like for today's children, who will live to see the comet when it comes again next time?

Hans Kalmus is Emeritus Professor of Biology in the University of London.