Starting Back Around

A few days ago, I noticed a piece on a space-news site I check every so often saying Halley’s Comet would reach aphelion, the furthest point in its orbit from the sun, this weekend. (Checking back to the piece, I saw that’s already happened.) While it means a bit of “it’s been that long already?”, I do remember all the attention being paid to that comet’s predictable return back in 1986, although after all the hype, and more unfortunate space-related news early that year than just “the United States couldn’t scrape together the money to send a probe to Halley’s where the USSR, the ESA, and Japan all managed that,” in North America it was only visible near the horizon early in the morning. I did get awakened early one day and driven out into the countryside, where we peered through binoculars and convinced ourselves we had indeed seen the comet. At the time I was also aware the coverage had brought up old-timers who were anticipating being able to see the comet twice in their lives, and supposed there was a chance of that myself. I suppose that at least begins to mean something other than “the obvious risks of looking forever back.” (I can at least think back not quite as far to managing to glimpse some unpredicted comets.)