It was an active year for comets in 1910.
Not only was there the predicted return of Halley’s Comet in April, but there was also the surprise appearance several months before of the Great January Comet (also known as the Daylight Comet).
Both of these events are remembered in the Lyttelton collection held here at the archives. The comets were witnessed by General Sir Neville Lyttelton, who wrote to his wife Katherine about them. Neville described seeing the Great January Comet whilst in Dublin, commenting that he ‘saw the comet very well indeed.’ Whilst the comet outshone the planet Venus when it was at its brightest and was reputably the brightest comet of the 20th century, Neville remarks that ‘it was nothing like the two I saw ... in ‘58 and ‘82.’
On 25 May 1910, whilst at Bell Hall, Neville writes that he saw Halley’s Comet. However ‘the east wind … made the atmosphere so dingy that it was not easy to distinguish it at all except through glasses and then it looked all blurred.’ He saw the comet once more on 27 May 1910, from Hagley Hall, but yet again hazy weather meant ‘the tail was invisible and the comet itself very blurred’.
So whilst it was an active year for celestial bodies, for Neville Lyttelton at least it was those of the 1880s that were much more spectacular to behold.