The Comet That Changed Astronomy Forever

One guy with a basic telescope accidentally proved Isaac Newton right and terrified all of Europe.

On a November night in 1680, a self-taught astronomer named Gottfried Kirch spotted a

blazing streak in the sky. It was the Great Comet of 1680, the very first comet

ever discovered with a telescope. Before this, comets were just seen as bad omens.

But this one was so incredibly bright you could see it in daylight, with a tail that

stretched across the sky like 180 full moons lined up. While many panicked,

scientists got to work. Isaac Newton used data from this exact comet to validate

his law of universal gravitation, proving that comets weren’t divine warnings, but objects obeying