Comets and eclipses in art are pictures of the sky that carry a meaning: a warning, a measurement or a symbol.
For most of history, people read trouble in them. Then they started to measure the sky, and artists began to record what they saw. These 12 works follow that shift, from omen to observation and, in the end, to symbol. Each one has a documented story behind it.
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How These Were Chosen
A work only has to pass one of three tests here. It records a comet or eclipse that people actually saw on a known date. It reads the sky as a sign, whether a divine warning or a political allegory. Or it shows how people watched or measured the event.
12. Mawangdui Comet Atlas (before 168 BCE)
Twenty-nine comets are drawn in ink across a sheet of silk, each one set above a few lines of Chinese text. An unknown scribe copied them before 168 BCE. That year, the manuscript was buried in Tomb 3 at Mawangdui, near Changsha in southern China.
The man in that tomb died in his thirties. He is believed to be the son of Li Cang, the first Marquis of Dai. Li Cang served the Han emperors as chancellor of the small kingdom of Changsha. Archaeologists opened the tomb in 1973.
The comets fill only one section of a much larger chart of the sky. The same silk carries some 250 drawings of clouds, halos, rainbows and stars, with about 300 short divination texts written below them. Each comet works as an entry in a manual of omens.
The scribe gives it a name and notes what its appearance foretells. Most of the portents concern war. No entry records the date of a sighting, so the manuscript cannot tell us when any of these comets crossed the sky.
The drawings still show real attention to what a comet looks like. Some have a large head and a long tail. Others carry a short stub of a tail, or none at all.
Tails come in ones, twos, threes and even fours, straight or curved to different degrees. The 29 comets carry 28 different names, and about half of the star names in the text appear in no other known source.
What I keep coming back to is the direction of the drawings. In all but the last of the 29, the head points down and the tail points up.
That matches the physics of a comet, whose tail always points away from the Sun. The same tomb held three maps drawn on silk, one of them a military map of the southern border with the kingdom of Nanyue.
At a Glance
Artist: Unknown Chinese scribe
Made: Before 168 BCE (Western Han dynasty)
Medium: Ink on silk
Size: About 150 by 48 cm (59 by 19 in), for the whole manuscript
Where to see it: Hunan Museum (formerly Hunan Provincial Museum), Changsha, China. Whether the silk is on display could not be confirmed in September 2026.
About This Painting
What is the manuscript called? The manuscript's modern Chinese title is Tianwen qixiang zazhan, roughly "Miscellaneous divinations from the patterns of the sky and the ether." Chinese texts call comets huixing, "broom stars."
Is the text older than the copy? Probably yes. The Mawangdui silk was buried in 168 BCE, but its script and content point to the state of Chu during the Warring States period, which ended in 221 BCE.
Are there older Chinese comet records? Yes, Chinese chronicles record individual comets at least as far back as 613 BCE. The Mawangdui silk is the oldest known text devoted to comets.
What takes up most of the manuscript? Halos around the Sun and Moon get the most space. Notes read like "double halos appearing in the second lunar month."
11. Bayeux Tapestry, Halley's Comet Scene (1070s)
A star trailing a bundle of streamers hangs in the top border, and a group of men below it raise their arms and point. The Latin words stitched beside them read ISTI MIRANT STELLA, "these men marvel at the star."
The scene belongs to the Bayeux Tapestry, made in the 1070s. Despite the name, the work is an embroidery in wool thread on linen, and no part of it was woven.