I am 36 years old. My infancy, much less my memory, began too late to see the last visit. Mark Twain was born as the comet reached its perihelion, and joked -

I am 36 years old. My infancy, much less my memory, began too late to see the last visit. Mark Twain was born as the comet reached its perihelion, and joked - a year or so before the next - that having come in with it he should go out with it. And he did. I think probably that the not-quite eight decades will be quite enough, and that much as Mr. Clemens saw it twice, I shall fall between the visibilities and miss it barely. But while my great grandfather might never have known what it looked like, I've seen nice pictures taken with good lenses. And I've seen other comets; Hale-Bopp was there for all of us to see just as I was at an age to understand and wonder and before I was old enough to be jaded and not to care. So I can picture Halley's, and I don't think I'm really missing much, for not being able to receive the photons that bounce off its surface directly with my own retinas. Still, though. The news of the aphelion is a reminder. My life is half over. I have so much left to do.