CHINNICI, IleanaIleanaCHINNICI2020-04-282020-04-2820150021-8286http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12386/24272This article deals with a less well-known aspect of comet studies. It is based on original sources and casts light on some contributions from Sicily to an astronomical research topic having a strong emotional influence on common people. It provides the opportunity to remark on some aspects of the nineteenth-century Sicilian social context, such as the battle against ignorance and superstition, as well as the role of social and professional rank in naming a new celestial body. Moreover, it treats the contributions of the astronomers of Palermo Observatory to early spectroscopic observations of comets, a scarcely developed topic in studies on history of astronomy. This analysis, motivated by the intent to complete and correct some recent studies on chronicles of comets, also provides a good pretext to retrace the little known history of the Palermo Observatory across the political and social changes of that century.STAMPAenArticle10.1177/00218286155854872-s2.0-84949801363000356233100002https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0021828615585487FIS/08 - DIDATTICA E STORIA DELLA FISICA