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Comet Halley’s 1986 return
Comet 1P/Halley, known to most as Halley’s Comet, is perhaps the most famous short-period comet in history — its return time of 76 years has allowed some people to view this once-in-a-lifetime event twice. Although it’s named after astronomer Edmond Halley, records of the comet date back as far as 240 B.C. in China. It was even embroidered into the Bayeux Tapestry, a famous cloth depicting hundreds of years of world events.
And on January 24, 1985, amateur astronomer and Astronomy columnist Stephen James O’Meara became the first person to visually observe Halley’s Comet, then at magnitude 19.6, as it approached the Sun for its February 9, 1986 return. He used a home-built 24-inch telescope on top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii to spot it.
Also in 1985, on July 2, the European Space Agency launched the robotic Giotto spacecraft to get up close and personal with the infamous comet. The next year, between March 12 and 15, 1986, the spacecraft approached the comet to within 370 miles (596 kilometers) and collected an impressive amount of data.
To celebrate the comet’s 1986 return to our night skies, countries around the world — from the Cook Islands in the South Pacific to Paraguay in South America — produced stamps. The Royal Mail issued a fantastic set of four stamps illustrated by the famous cartoonist Ralph Steadman. The selection is colorful and imaginative, depicting scenes such as discoverer Edmond Halley as a comically disgruntled comet; two comets in the sky (representing seeing Halley twice in a lifetime); the Giotto encounter; and the comet rounding the Sun.
