Comet (pronounced kom-it)
(1) In astronomy, a celestial body moving about the sun,
usually in a highly eccentric orbit, most thought to consist of a solid
frozen nucleus, part of which vaporizes on approaching the heat from Sun (or
other star) to form a gaseous, luminous coma (the envelope of dust and gas, the most dramatic part of which
is the long, luminous tail which streams away from the sun (under the influence of solar winds).
(2) In astronomy, a celestial phenomenon with the
appearance of such a body.
(3) Any of several species of hummingbird found in the
Andes.
(4) In slang, as “vomit comet”, a reduced-gravity
aircraft which, by flying in a parabolic flight path, briefly emulates a close
to weightless environment. Used to train
astronauts or conduct research, the slang derived from the nausea some
experience.
(5) In figurative use (often applied retrospectively and
with a modifier such as “blazing comet”), someone (or, less commonly, something)
who appears suddenly in the public eye, makes a significant impact and then quickly
fades from view, their fleeting moment of brilliance a brief but spectacular
event.
1150–1200: From the Middle English comete, partly from the Old English comēta and partly from the Anglo-French & Old French comete (which in Modern French persists
as comète), all from the Latin comētēs & comēta, from the Ancient Greek κομήτης (komḗtēs) (wearing long hair; ling-haired), the construct being komē-, a variant stem of komân (to let one's hair grow), from κόμη
(kómē) (hair) + -tēs (the agent suffix). The
Greek was a shortened form of ἀστὴρ κομήτης (astēr
komētēs (longhaired star)), a reference to a comet’s streaming tail. The descendants in other languages include
the Malay komet, the Urdu کومٹ (komeṭ) and the Welsh comed. Comet, cometlessness, cometography,
cometographer, cometology & cometarium are nouns, cometless, cometic, cometical,
cometocentric, cometary, cometographical & cometlike (also as comet-like) are adjectives, cometesimal is a
noun & adjective; the noun plural is comets.
Comets orbit
the Sun along an elongated path and when not near the heat, the body consists
solely of its nucleus, thought to be almost always a solid core of frozen
water, frozen gases, and dust. When near
the sun, the nucleus heats, eventually to boil and thus release the gaseous and
luminous coma (the envelope of dust and gas),
the most dramatic part of which is the long, luminous tail which streams away from the sun (under the influence of solar winds). The path of a comet can be in the shape of an
ellipse or a hyperbola; if a hyperbolic path, it enters the solar system once
and then leaves forever while if it follows an ellipse, it remains in orbit
around the sun. Astronomer divide comets into (1) “short period” (those
with orbital periods of less than 200 years and coming from the Kuiper belt)
and (2) “long-period” (those with an orbital period greater than 200 years and
coming from the Oort cloud).
Before the development of modern techniques, comets were
visible only when near the sun so their appearance was sudden and, until early astronomers
were able to calculate the paths of those which re-appeared, unexpected. Superstition stepped in where science didn’t
exist and comets were in many cultures regarded as omens or harbingers of doom,
famine, ruin, pestilence and the overthrow of kingdoms or empires. It was the English astronomer, mathematician
and physicist Edmond Halley (1656–1742; Astronomer Royal 1720-1742) who in 1682
published the calculations which proved many comets were periodic and thus their
appearance could be predicted. Halley's
Comet, named in his honor, remains the only known short-period comet consistently
visible from Earth with the naked eye and remains the world’s most famous; it
last appeared in 1986 and will next visit our skies in 2061.
Halley’s findings put an end to (most) of the superstition
surrounding comets but commerce still took advantage of their presence. A comet with a famously vivid tail appeared
in 1811 and in that year, Europe enjoyed a remarkably pleasant autumn (fall)
which was most conducive to agriculture and became associated with the abundant
and superior yield of the continental vineyards. For that reason, the vintage was called the “comet
wine” and the term became a feature in marketing the product which emerged from
any year in which notable comets were seen, a superior quality alleged (and
thus a premium price). Wine buffs say
any relationship between the quality of a vintage and the travel of celestial
bodies is entirely coincidental.
So the story is well known and in the years since her
death there have been a number of biographies, critical studies, collections of
letters, academic conferences; given that, it’s seemed by the 2020s unlikely
there was much more to say about one whose adult life spanned not even two
decades. For that reason the 1000-odd densely
printed pages of Dr Heather Clark’s Red
Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath was a revelation
because, as the author pointed out, her life “has been subsumed by her afterlife”
and what was needed was a volume which focused on what she wrote and why that
output means she should be set free from the “cultural baggage of the past 50 years”
and shown as “one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.”
Red Comet is thus far this century’s outstanding biography and a feminist perspective is not required to recognize that when reading her last poems (written in obvious rage but sustaining a controlled tension few have matched) that she was a profoundly disturbed woman. Most clinicians who have commented seem now to agree her depression of long-standing had descended to something psychotic by the time of her suicide, a progression she seems to have acknowledged, writing to one correspondent that she was composing poetry “on the edge of madness”. This is though a biography written by a professional literary critic so it does not construct Plath as tale of tragedy and victimhood as one might if telling the story of some troubled celebrity. Instead, the life is allowed to unfold in a way which shows how it underpins her development as a writer, the events and other glimpses of the person interpolated into the progress of a text through drafts and revisions, each word polished as the poet progresses to what gets sent to the publisher. Red Comet is not a book for those interested in how much blame Ted Hughes should bear for his wife killing herself and in that matter it’s unlikely to change many opinions but as a study of the art of Sylvia Plath, it’s outstanding. Unlike many figurative uses of "comet", Plath continues to blaze her trail.
Pre-production de Havilland Comet (DH 106) with the original, square windows, England, 1949 (left) and Comet 4 (Registration G-APDN) in BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation (1939-1974 which in 1974 was merged with BEA (British European Airways) and others to later become BA (British Airways)) livery, Tokyo (Haneda International (HND / RJTT)), Japan October 1960.
The term hoodoo is often attached to objects thought jinxed. When the de Havilland Comet (DH 106; the first commercial jet airliner), within a year of its first flight in 1949, began to suffer a number of catastrophic in-flight accidents, newspapers wrote of the “Comet hoodoo”, something encouraged because, in the pre “black-box” era, analysis of aviation incidents was a less exact science than now and for some time the crashes appeared inexplicable. It was only when extensive testing revealed the reason for the structural failures could be traced to stresses in the airframe induced aspects of the design that the hoodoo was understood to be the operation of physics. Other manufacturers noted the findings and changed their designs, Boeing's engineers acknowledging the debt they owed to de Havilland because it was the investigation of the Comet's early problems which produced the solutions which helped the Boeing 707 (1957) and its many successors to be the successful workhorses they became. As a footnote, by the time the Comet 4 was released in 1958 the problems had been solved but commercially, the project was doomed and reputational damage done. Between 1949-1964, barely more than 100 were sold although many did provide reliable service until 1981 and the airframe proved adaptable, dozens of military variants produced, the most notable being the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod, a maritime patrol version which was in service with the Royal Air Force (RAF) until 2011.
It’s because of the lessons learned from the Comet hoodoo that the apertures of airliner windows have rounded edges, the traditional four-cornered openings creating four weak spots prone to failure under stress. In the early 1950s there was much optimism about the Comet and had it been successful, it could have given the UK’s commercial aviation industry a lead in a sector which rapidly would expand in the post war years. One who didn’t express much faith in his country’s capacity to succeed in the field was the politician Duff Cooper (1890–1954) who, shortly before taking up his appointment as the UK’s ambassador to France, was flying on an Avro York (a transport and civil adaptation of the Lancaster heavy bomber) and he noted in his diary: “I think the designer of the York has discovered the shape of an armchair in which it is quite impossible to be comfortable, if this is typical of the civil transport plane in which were are to compete against the US, we are already beaten.” As Lindsay Lohan’s smiles indicate, as least on private jets, the seats are now comfortable.
The Mercury Comet, built in four generations between 1960-1969 and another between 1971-1977, had a most unusual beginning. The Ford Motor Company (“FoMoCo”, Mercury’s parent corporation) had in the mid 1950s studied the five-tier (Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac) branding used by General Motors (GM) and decided it too would create a five divisional structure (which by 1955 Chrysler had also matched). The GM model dated from the 1920s and was called the “ladder” (GM at times had more than five rungs) and the idea was each step on the later would take a buyer into a higher price (and at least theoretically more profitable) range of models. There was a time when this approach made sense but even in the 1950s when Ford embarked on their restructure it was beginning to fragment, the implications of which would become apparent over the decades. Thus Ford ended up (firefly) with five divisions: Ford, Mercury, Edsel, Lincoln and Continental. That didn’t last long and Continental was the first to go, followed soon by the still infamous Edsel and the corporation even flirted with the idea of shuttering Lincoln.
The original plan had been for the Comet to be the “small Edsel” but by the time the release date drew close, the decision had been taken to terminate the Edsel brand so the Q&D (quick & dirty) solution was to sell the car through the Lincoln-Mercury dealer network, an expedient which lasted for the 1960 & 1961 model years before the Comet was integrated into the Mercury range and badged appropriately. The early Comets were built on the Falcon platform (“compact” in contemporary US terms) but when the 1966 range was released, the cars became “intermediates” (ie the size between the “compact” and “full-size” platforms) but the Comet name was withdrawn from use after 1969. It was in 1971 revived for Mercury’s companion to the Maverick, Ford’s replacement for the compact Falcon which slotted above the Pinto which was in a domestic class so compact the industry coined the class-designation “sub compact”. Cheap to produce and essentially “disposable”, the Maverick and Comet proved so popular they continued in production for a season even after their nominal replacements were in showrooms.
The Mercury Comet has never attracted great interest from collectors because few were built with the more robust or exotic drive-trains found more frequently in both the competition from GM & Chrysler and the companion versions from Ford. The mid-range performance package for the general market was the Comet Cyclone, introduced in 1964 to replace the Comet’s earlier S-22 option; neither were big sellers but they were not expensive to produce and remained profitable parts of the Mercury range. In 1968, during the peak of the muscle car era, Mercury sought to promote the line, dropping the Comet name and promoting the machines as the “Cyclone”, now with quite potent engines although the emphasis clearly was drag racing rather than turning corners; the high performance package was now called the “Cyclone Spoiler”. For the NASCAR circuits however, there was in 1969 the Cyclone Spoiler II, one of the so-called “aero cars”, the better known of which were the much more spectacular, be-winged Dodge Daytona (1969) and Plymouth Superbird (1970). Chrysler’s cars looked radical to achieve what they did but the modifications which created the Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II and Ford Torino Talladega were so subtle as to be barely noticeable, the most effective being the increased slope on the lengthened nose, the flush grill and some changes which had the effect of lowering both the centre of gravity and the body. The Ford and Mercury might have been a less spectacular sight than the Dodge or Plymouth but on the tracks the seeming slight tweaks did the job and both were among the fastest and most successful of their brief era.
1969 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II (slab-sided but slippery, left), 1970 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler (sleek but less aerodynamic than its predecessor, centre) and the aborted 1970 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II (handicapped out of contention by NASCAR, right).
In 1970, just how aerodynamic was the 1969 Cyclone Spoiler was proved when the racing teams tried the new model which, although it looked sleek, was not as aerodynamically efficient and noticeably slower. That might seem something of an own goal but Ford were blindsided by NASCAR’s decision to render the low-volume “aero cars” uncompetitive by restricting them to the use of 305 cubic inch (5.0 litre) engines while the conventional bodies were permitted to use the full 430 (7.0). Thus the aerodynamic modifications planned for the 1970 Torino and Cyclone never entered production. Of the two prototype Cyclone Spoiler IIs built, one survives revealing a nose which was in its own way as radical as those earlier seen on the Plymouth and Dodge. In the collector market, the aero cars are much sought but the Cyclones are the least valued which may seem strange because they were on the circuits among the most successful of the era. Market analysts attribute this to (1) the Cyclone Spoiler II (and Torino Talladega) being visually much less eye-catching than the wild-looking pair from Chrysler and (2) the Cyclone Spoiler II being sold only with a modest 351 cubic inch (5.8 litre) engine whereas the Fords ran 428s (7.0) and the Chryslers 440 (7.2) & 426 (6.9) units, the latter a version of the engine actually used in the race cars.
The highly qualified Kate Upton (b 1992) was in 2014 featured in a Sports Illustrated session filmed in a "vomit comet" (a modified Boeing 727 with a padded interior).
