This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A sequence on the Bayeux Tapestry shows King Harold alongside a crowd gazing at the sky, beneath the embroidered caption Isti mirant stella ("those people marvel at the star"). Above Harold sits Halley's Comet, with ghostlike invasion boats in the border below—a Norman framing of Harold as a doomed usurper whose betrayal invited destruction.
A comet, or the regum terror (terror of kings) as the contemporary Norman writer William of Poitiers put it, was widely taken as a portent of change in human affairs. The accurate record of the appearance of the comet is not the point of the depiction in the Bayeux Tapestry. As most Western European sources concur, the comet appeared in the evening sky from April 24, 1066.
It remained visible for one or two weeks—four months or so after Harold's coronation. Modern computation indicates that the comet came within about 15 million kilometers (9.3 million miles) of Earth, supporting a contemporary Chinese report that it was as bright as Venus, with a tail extending 15 degrees across the sky. The sudden appearance of such a bright comet must have made a deep impression on those who witnessed it.
How the comet was recorded and described by medieval writers tells us a great deal about how medieval astronomy operated, its links with astrology and the wider context of global observation and book learning in which it should be placed. William of Poitiers interpreted the comet as a portent of Harold's ill-fated kingship. It is mentioned only in a section of his narrative set after the battle and the attempts to retrieve the fallen king's body.
He also noted the good fortune the comet indicated for Harold's opponent. Contemporary historian William of Jumièges saw the comet appear in the northwest with a three-forked tail. He believed it signified that changes were to come in rulership.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles D and C (sets of annals in Old English), however, recorded the appearance of the comet but made no connection with regime change. The "haired-star," they wrote, was "a sign such as men never saw before." Chroniclers of the next generation elaborated further on the comet as a portent. The English monk Orderic Vitalis (1075–c. 1142) noted that "learned astrologers who investigate the secrets of natural science" had declared it an omen of the transfer of a kingdom.
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