728 Ulisse Aldrovandi

Furthermore, no type of comet inspired such horror and astonishment as the one that appeared in the year 1527, on the eleventh of December, around sunset. As many authors—and especially Lycosthenes—have noted, it appeared within the territory of the Palatinate. This comet was sword-shaped and blood-red in its own form, but it was truly horrific because of the images surrounding it; for it was encircled by a terrifying cloud, stars, spears, swords, and human heads on all sides, as the reader may contemplate in Figure V. It is said that many people, stunned and terrified by this spectacle alone, fell ill or collapsed into fainting fits.

Thus far we have dealt with the variations and generation of comets according to the opinion of Aristotle and the thinking of other philosophers. Now, the views of others—namely the ancient philosophers—must be revealed. Anaxagoras and Democritus claimed that comets were a certain conjunction of the five planets (excluding the Sun and Moon), and they even bestowed the name "planets" upon them. They believed that if those five wandering stars happened to meet and touch by chance, they would represent the image of a single star; its splendor would then spread out further, appearing to display something like a "head of hair." They also added that once the comets dissipated, the individual planets remained visible.

Following these philosophers, others added a sixth planet to the five, which they called a comet. They claimed it mostly remains hidden beneath the solar rays and rarely emerges from them, which is why a comet so seldom appears. They support this opinion with the example of Mercury, which, although a planet itself, is rarely seen because it recedes from the Sun’s rays by only a small interval. Albertus Magnus attempted to refute the views of these philosophers with very strong arguments in order to prove the common consensus among philosophers regarding the generation of comets. Anyone interested can find these arguments in the works of that same author.

For our part, however, we believe that this ancient opinion should not be entirely condemned or rejected. It is rejected when this generation of comets is attributed solely to the planets, but it is supported when comets are said to be formed in the ethereal regions. Indeed, Cornelius Gemma established that the place of a comet's generation is in the more noble part of the universe, as he did not believe it possessed the nature of a corruptible meteor. Moreover, this was clearly evident in the case of that comet which appeared brilliantly in November of the year 1572, in the constellation of Cassiopeia. It surpassed Jupiter in size and was very similar to it in shape and brightness; it was fixed to the northern edge of the Milky Way, such that it formed an almost perfect rhombus with the second, fourth, and twelfth stars of Cassiopeia (which are of the third magnitude).

Consequently, many investigators of celestial phenomena concluded that this type of comet was not in the elementary region—the seat Aristotle assigned to comets—but placed it instead in the ethereal region, because it possessed absolutely no proper motion and no parallax. This new star sparkled like a lyre, and appeared suddenly at its maximum size without any gradual increase. It spread no "hair" or tail, and it shone longer than any other comet ever has—specifically for sixteen months—before gradually fading away into nothingness. Its brilliance, compared to other stars, was wondrous, for it surpassed Sirius, Procyon, Jupiter, and all other stars, both fixed and wandering, in its splendor and size.

Democritus and Anaxagoras, therefore, did not stray far from the truth when they judged comets to be certain conjunctions of stars. Likewise, Nicephorus recorded that a new star had been seen, around which many tiny stars gathered like so many bees around their leader. Dion also left a record of a star sighted from the City for many days, which later dissolved into many parts. Finally, Democritus observed that after comets were reduced to nothing, certain stars appeared.

For this reason, it will be necessary for us to assert that many luminous small bodies—like so many previously unseen little stars, both fixed and wandering—dwell in the Heavens, which we have occasionally observed through the telescope. Indeed, anyone may, at their leisure, look closely at some of these in the Pleiades through a carefully crafted spyglass. Likewise, in the single nebulous star of Cancer, one can see through a convenient instrument fifteen little stars