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From 1877 to 1887, the decade of the Great Comets, we had a greater and more representative concentration of phenomena related to UFO activity than during any other similar period prior to 1947. Astronomy's part has been an important one; the pertinent observations of astronomers extend through the centuries; and to such an extent that we cannot consider all of them in one short volume. However, if we consider the decade of the Great Comets, as a typical slice of UFO History, we shall err but little and that little quantitative rather than qualitative. The events of the comet years were numerous and concentrated, but not typical. Astronomers missed the best cue of their collective lives during those years, for they were the culmination of generations of observations which, if accepted at face value and interpreted with psychic insight, would have authenticated UFO deduction. The comet years would have supplied visible confirmation to anyone with the perspicacity to look for it. It is difficult to select any single event as having initiated this period. In fact there is no real discontinuity; merely an unusual surge of erratics. Either of two obscure occurrences might serve as curtain raisers, but there were straws in the wind before 1877. Dr. Kirkwood of Indiana University had commented on the unusual, and increasingly large, number of fireballs reported, and there had been a modest but steady increase in the number of comets discovered per year. Neither of the two minor events within our solar system was great enough to attract much public attention at a time when astronomy was moving out of the visual stage into its golden era of spectroscopic and photographic adventure. The true magnitude of the universe of stars and nebulae was only beginning to dawn on the human intellect, and studies of the solar system beginning to be passé, because objects only a few score millions d miles distant were too near home to concern the exploring mind. Yet visual observation rolled up a record in the later years of the 19th century which may turn out to be Astronomy's magnum opus for the race of mankind. The first of the two little events took place in an obscure corner of the Mare Serenitatis, which is one of the Seas, or dark areas, which make up the Man in the Moon. Near the modest sized but well- known lunar crater called Hyginus by the selenographers, there appeared sometime in 1877, without fuss or warning, a small but perfect and distinct crater. It was only a few short miles in diameter. It was just big enough to be comfortably seen with the small telescopes of that day. Orthodox astronomers, who did not believe in changes of the moon, refused to accept the word of the selenographers at first, and there was a minor intraprofessional hassle. Eventually the little erratic was called Hyginus N ? IMPRESSION, MADE BY FORCE-FORMING A NEW Ships Hull MADES SUCH HOLES. MAY BEEN “DEEP-ROUGHED" BY BURNER, AFTERWARDS. 133 PART FOUR Astronomy Speaks The Incredible Decade