Cosmic Events The Three Comets of 1618

Clifford J. Cunningham’s Ph.D. in history of astronomy dealt largely with William Herschel and the asteroids. He is Research Fellow in the Astrophysics Group at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia. He has written or edited 15 books on history of astronomy including a 5-volume history of early asteroid studies published by Springer. He is a Series Editor of Springer’s Historical & Cultural Astronomy books, Associate editor of the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage and a member of the IAU. Asteroid (4276) was named Clifford in his honor in 1990. His discoveries include identifying Charles Burney Jr. as the person who created the word 'asteroid' in 1802; showing Manilius introduced the numerical six magnitude system; and a description of the aurora borealis in Milton’s Paradise Lost which had eluded scholars for 350 years.