2024 events

Sun 31st
10:00-10:30
Starlight Room

Halley’s Comet in 1910 - from a New Zealand perspective

John Drummond

RASNZ, University of Southern Queensland

This talk presents key observations of Comet 1P/Halley from New Zealand during its 1910 apparition. New Zealand filled an important longitudinal and latitudinal gap in coverage of this much anticipated comet. We investigate key people and their observations and photographs taken from New Zealand of 1P/Halley. How did these often unpublished observations compare with overseas accounts? In addition, we ask the question as to whether any New Zealanders saw the Great January Comet of 1910 (C/1910 A1) and got the two mixed up.

John was the President of the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand from 2016 to 2018. In 2019 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand. In 2016 John was awarded a MSc (Astronomy) by Swinburne University in Melbourne (Australia), and currently he is researching the history of cometary astronomy in New Zealand as a part-time, off-campus, internet-based PhD student in the Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland (Australia), co-supervised by Dr Carolyn Brown Professor Wayne Orchiston. John is also a consultant for ASTRONZ, the telescope shop of the Auckland Astronomical Society.