Comet Leonard

For thousands of years, comets were omens for diasters. To ancient Hindi, it signified disruption in the order of the world; to ancient Chinese, it meant famine and war; to medieval Europeans, it foretold upcoming diseases... Our ancestors lived in a time before Internet, before television, before radio, before books. Back then the nighttime was simple. It was just them and the unchanging starry sky, signifying the divine creators' perfection. This is why the sudden appearance of comets disrupted the heavenly orders, and it brought them fear and guilt.

Today, we celebrate their arrival with overwhelming joy and curiosity. We look at them through telescopes with a sense of wonder and none of the fears. To me, it marked the happy ending of our millennia-long story with comets, a story of how we learned to use knowledge to conquer fear.

(This image is of the recently discovered ‘Comet Leonard’. The data was acquired from iTelescope, which I processed using pixinsight and photoshop)