...These Blazeing Starrs!

Since comets have been recorded, they've augured catastrophe, messiahs, upheaval and end times. A short film about these meteoric ice-cored fireballs and their historic ties to divination that combines imagery of 15th-18th century European broadsides with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory footage.

...These Blazeing Starrs! juxtaposes a modern empirical desire to probe and measure against older methods, when we translated the sky to predict human folly. These days, comets are understood as time capsules harboring elemental information about the formation of our solar system. We smash rockets into them to read spectral signatures. In a sense, the remain oracles - it's just the manner of divining which has changed.

...These Blazeing Starrs!

Threaten the World

with Famine, Plague, & Warrs:

To Princes, Death:

to Kingdoms, many Crosses:

To all Estates, inevitable Losses!

To Herds-men, Rot'

to Plowmen, haples Seasons:

To Saylors, Storms;

to Cittyes, Civil Treasons.

-- Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, 1578