Comet and guest-star articles

Articles mentioning comets, broom stars, guest stars or long stars (長星), by year, with the precision of 'actual observation report' measured on a coded sample.

1,417articles · precision 0.68

Key point

Multiply comet article counts by the 68% precision; one in three is a memorial or debate citing a comet. The Halley-year peaks survive the correction.

Formula: Keyword article count; precision = observation reports in sample / sample
How to read it: Check whether peaks appear in Halley apparition years (1456, 1531, 1607, 1682, 1759, 1835).
Caveats: '彗' also appears figuratively and in names, so precision is below 1.

Reliability card: sampledSampled precision — share of keyword hits that mean what the metric says, measured on a coded stratified sample
Precision 68.3% (Wilson 95% 58.7%–76.6%) on a coded stratified sample of 101 articles (10 per 50-year period, principal editions). The 4 articles left undecided were counted as 'no'. The codebook and all judgments can be downloaded from the Data page.

Keyword articles per year (principal editions). Bands: Halley apparition years.

First 60 of 126 rows shown; the CSV has them all.

Year	Articles	Days
1398.0	1.0	1.0
1401.0	1.0	1.0
1402.0	2.0	2.0
1403.0	1.0	1.0
1404.0	1.0	1.0
1410.0	1.0	1.0
1413.0	1.0	1.0
1417.0	1.0	1.0
1431.0	1.0	1.0
1433.0	5.0	5.0
1437.0	1.0	1.0
1439.0	5.0	5.0
1443.0	1.0	1.0
1444.0	1.0	1.0
1449.0	1.0	1.0
1450.0	1.0	1.0
1456.0	13.0	12.0
1457.0	16.0	16.0
1458.0	14.0	14.0
1459.0	37.0	37.0
1468.0	8.0	8.0
1471.0	26.0	26.0
1472.0	10.0	10.0
1485.0	1.0	1.0
1487.0	1.0	1.0
1490.0	37.0	27.0
1491.0	7.0	7.0
1493.0	2.0	2.0
1494.0	1.0	1.0
1495.0	1.0	1.0
1497.0	1.0	1.0
1499.0	2.0	1.0
1500.0	31.0	28.0
1506.0	2.0	2.0
1513.0	2.0	2.0
1514.0	1.0	1.0
1515.0	1.0	1.0
1518.0	1.0	1.0
1521.0	1.0	1.0
1525.0	1.0	1.0
1528.0	1.0	1.0
1529.0	1.0	1.0
1531.0	48.0	39.0
1532.0	94.0	89.0
1533.0	71.0	62.0
1537.0	9.0	8.0
1539.0	44.0	37.0
1545.0	1.0	1.0
1546.0	1.0	1.0
1554.0	11.0	9.0
1555.0	1.0	1.0
1556.0	44.0	40.0
1557.0	25.0	21.0
1558.0	30.0	29.0
1566.0	1.0	1.0
1576.0	1.0	1.0
1585.0	3.0	3.0
1590.0	1.0	1.0
1592.0	43.0	43.0
1593.0	143.0	141.0

Download CSV: c_comet.csv