They used a tambour, a great bass drum, for all public announcements at Grancey, which at the same time every
day, at late dusk, when work was finished, so the townspeople, could assemble for the news.
Like the journals in Paris posted in the windows. Telling of the alarm caused by the first women asking for hunting permits or the Donati comet bright on the horizon.
Depths of Glory, A Biographical Novel of Camille Pissarro by Irving Stone p. 112
Comet Donati, is a long-period comet named after the Italian astronomer Giovanni Battista Donati who first observed it on June 2, 1858. After the Great Comet of 1811, it was the most brilliant comet that appeared in the 19th century. It was also the first comet to be photographed.
Donati first observed the comet on 2 June from the Florence Observatory: it was initially visible as a small nebula-like object of magnitude 7 near the “head” of Leo. By mid-August it had brightened sufficiently to be visible to the naked eye.
In September it passed into Ursa Major. For much of its apparition it occupied a unique position (among great comets) in the sky and was particularly well placed for Northern Hemisphere viewers.
It was nearest the Earth on October 10, 1858, and for much of October was a brilliant object with a long, scimitar-like dust tail and prominent gas tail. It remained a naked-eye object until November for Southern Hemisphere observers. The final observation was by William Mann, chief assistant at the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope, who detected it as a faint nebulosity on March 4, 1859.
During its apparition, the comet was particularly closely studied by the astronomer George Phillips Bond and his father William Cranch Bond. G.P. Bond incorporated these observations and those of many other astronomers into a monograph, “An Account of the Great Comet of 1858“, which remains his most important scientific work and for which he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, being the first American to receive the award.
Image by William Turner . Public Domain. View the rest of info on the comet.
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