Featured on PDR in the collection The Comet Book (1587)

This stunning set of images come from a 16th-century treatise on comets, created anonymously in Flanders (now northern France) and now held at the Universitätsbibliothek Kassel. Commonly known as The Comet Book (or Kometenbuch in German), its full title translates as “Comets and their General and Particular Meanings, According to Ptolomeé, Albumasar, Haly, Aliquind and other Astrologers”. As the title (and indeed medieval origins of the book) suggests the focus is on the meaning of comets, the associated folklore and superstitions as played out on Earth, as opposed to an exploration from a scientific standpoint (the telescope would not be invented until the following century). Comets then are seen in terms of their mysterious terrestrial effects, which as a rule firmly occupy the disastrous category…