N00277:213
Kometographia. Or A discourse concerning comets; wherein the nature of blazing stars is enquired…
Kometographia. Or A discourse concerning comets; wherein the nature of blazing stars is enquired into: with an historical account of all the comets which have appeared from the beginning of the world unto this present year, M.DC.LXXXIII. : Expressing the place in the heavens, where they were seen, their motion, forms, duration; and the remarkable events which have followed in the world, so far as they have been by learned men observed. : As also two sermons occasioned by the late blazing stars. / By Mr. Increase Mather, teacher of a church at Boston in New-England. ; [Three lines of Scripture texts]Kometographia. Or A discourse concerning comets; wherein the nature of blazing stars is enquired into: with an historical account of all the comets which have appeared from the beginning of the world unto this present year, M.DC.LXXXIII. : Expressing the place in the heavens, where they were seen, their motion, forms, duration; and the remarkable events which have followed in the world, so far as thay have been by learned men observed. : As also two sermons occasioned by the late blazing stars. / By Mr. Increase Mather, teacher of a church at Boston in New-England. ; [Three lines of Scripture texts]
printed by S.G. for S.S. i.e, 1683
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
A.D. 1652. A Comet was seen December 10. continuing 21 days. Its motion was retrograde from the South towards the North, through the Hare, the foot of Orion, Taurus, unto Perseus. Its diurnal motion at first was 11 Degrees and 16 Minutes, but at last hardly 30 Minutes. When it was nearest to the Earth, its distance was 110 S.T. the Parallax being 31. m. 15. sec. But a little before its disappearance it was removed 2250•. S.T. the Parallax being but 9 sec. so that at last it was as high as the Orb of Jupiter. When observed with a Telescope, the head appeared to be round, wand not less then the Moon when at the full; and four or five clo•s might be discerned in the Cometical body ▪ whereof two were something bigger then the rest, and many minute little bodies resembling Stars, but their light not so vivid as that of the true Stars is. These clots in the Cometical body, did very much alter and dissipate every day. The blaze was seven degrees as to its visible Longitude, in form like a Pyramid• or Pillar of a duskish, smoky kind of aspect. The true diameter of the Comet was 825. Mill. Germ., so that if a Man should travail 10 German (or 40 of our) miles every day, he could not go round the body of this Comet in less then 259 days, of so vast a circumference was its magnitude. Many undertook to predict strange ⟨p. 112⟩things from the appearance of this Blazing Star; Especially a blind but insolent xBuzzard of our own Nation (as learned Mr. Gataker in the English Annotations on Jer. 10.2. not undeservedly calls him) foretold matters which never came to pass, yet several things very remarkable we all know attended this Comet, e. g. Wars between England and Holland, Denmark, Sweden. Bloody Sea fights, the Sea and the Waves thereof roaring. Strange alterations in England, for the next year Cromwell dissolved that which is known by the name of the Rump-Parliament, and set up for himself. Also Quakerism now began to infest the World. The Po•e and the King of Bohemia died within a year or two of this Comet.