Take yourself back in time to the year 1758. We are in Germany and it's winter, so we can confidently assume that it is cold, with possible snow covering the fields and roofs of houses. Here we meet the protagonist of this story, farmer and astronomer Johann Georg Palitzsch. He is scanning the sky as he has been doing for a while. Palitzsch has been looking for a very specific object, one that has been predicted to make a return that very year. But the year is almost over, and today is Christmas Day. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

We can picture the wind and the cold, which probably bothered the then 35-year-old Palitzsch, but we know that the sky is clear. We know that because he sees a new light appearing in the sky.

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