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Heavenly Omens
Ever since ancient times, the appearance of a bright comet in the sky has been regarded as an evil omen. This is because comets have long been seen as signs of impending disastrous events, such as the death of a great ruler or the outbreak of a plague. The ancient Romans recorded that a brilliant comet appeared just before the assassination of Julius Caesar, and a fiery comet seen in 1665 was blamed for a flareup of bubonic plague in London that killed 90,000 people. When a comet appeared in 1519, the Aztec king Montezuma saw it as an omen that his empire would soon be destroyed (and it soon was). Some people in the United States even connected the American defeat at the Alamo in 1835 to an appearance of Halley's Comet that year.
Some people still regard comets as bad omens. When a comet named Kohoutek approached the vicinity of the earth in 1973, members of a U.S. religious sect called the Children of God feared that a terrible disaster was about to occur. And in 1997 thirty-nine members of the Heaven's Gate cult committed suicide in California because they believed that the approach of a comet named Hale-Bopp foretold the destruction of civilization.
Other types of heavenly events are also often regarded as omens. Some past eclipses of the sun have produced even more fear than comets normally do. But some events, such as the sighting of a shooting star, have usually been viewed as good omens. Another example of a good omen is the sudden appearance of a very bright new star. Astronomers call a bright new star a "supernova", and believe that they are created when a very faint star suddenly explodes and temporarily becomes much brighter. To ancient people, a supernova often appeared to be a new star, and in some societies its sudden appearance was thought to signal the birth of a great future leader. Some historians think that the Star of Bethlehem, which appeared just before the birth of Jesus, was a supernova.
Note: Because supernovas are created by explosions, they gradually become dimmer as time passes, and within a few years most of them are no longer visible to the naked eye.
