On Tuesday, March 1, 1808, Judge Thomas Rodney wrote a letter to his son -- U.S. Attorney General Ceasar Rodney -- with news of the sighting of a comet in the Natchez sky.

Rodney, a territorial judge who lived in the village of Washington near Natchez, had made several visits during the previous weeks to William Dunbar's plantation, The Forest, located south of Natchez. There, through Dunbar's telescope, the judge observed the comet in the night sky.

As early as 1806, Rodney had peered at the stars through Dunbar's Gregorian instrument which Dunbar had designed himself and had constructed in London in 1805. Dunbar was so happy with the telescope that he wrote President Thomas Jefferson about it. The two had begun a regular correspondence in 1799.

On Tuesday, Dec. 17, 1805, Dunbar wrote the President: "I have just received from London a six feet Gregorian reflecting telescope with six magnifying powers from 100 to 550 times." Dunbar said when duties were collected at Fort Adams prior to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, an exemption was provided for books and astronomical instruments, which were to be used for the public good in the Mississippi Territory. But now duties were being collected at New Orleans and the collectors there, Dunbar complained, were not so liberal minded.

On an early morning in February 1806, Dunbar and Judge Rodney viewed the moon, the north star and Venus. At 4:30 a.m. they viewed Saturn and Jupiter and after breakfast peered at the sun. After finding "no spots," they determined that a hot summer was on the way.

On April 5, 1800, while in Baton Rouge, Dunbar had watched a meteor (he called it "the phenomenon") race through the night sky. The chuck of rock was a big as a house -- maybe 80 feet long -- "wholly luminous," streaking from the southwest to the northeast in 15 seconds. Racing above the treetops, maybe 200 yards above the ground, Dunbar said after the meteor went out of sight he heard a "violent rushing noise" and seconds later heard a loud crash. He never reported whether the site of the crash was located.

The comet of 1807-08 was a big topic of conversation throughout the territory, some seeing it as sign of impending doom. But the scientist Dunbar and the curious Rodney found it to be a powerful experience. People throughout Natchez country beat a path to the Forest to look through Dunbar's telescope.

"The comet...made its appearance above the western horizon here in the evening about the 20th of September and was first observed by Mr. (Seth) Pease (the Surveyor General)...," the judge told Ceasar.

Dunbar said Pease was "an excellent astronomer." Pease made nightly observations of the comet and every so often noted the comet's position. As an example, from Sept. 22-25, 1807, as Pease watched the comet, he made notations of its location, such as "comet north of Saturn," or "north of Mars."

Pease and Dunbar, said Rodney, found the comet's course to be "from S.W. to N.E. Their observations commenced while it was on the leg of the Virgin a little below her robe, and in its course passed over the bright Star Lyra in the Harp. I went several times to view this phenomena through Mr. Dunbar's glasses, which are the best we have in this part of the country. Indeed, they are excellent."

This was a time when many Americans were familiar with the night sky. Many a Natchez country couple took a walk through a meadow or along a river bank after twilight and gazed into the expanse of the night sky.

Families sat on porches at night and viewed the spectacle of the universe. They knew the constellations and where the stars would be located at particular times of the night and during the different seasons.

But Dunbar and Pease, scientists and astronomers, fully understood the scientific significance of witnessing a comet in their lifetimes.

Rodney thought comets were "no doubt planets belonging to the Solar System, moving in more distant and more elliptical, or more eccentric, orbits than the other known planets in our system..." His thoughts became even stranger, but few knew what a comet was in those days.

Rodney thought that when a comet approached the sun that its atmosphere could handle a certain amount of heat and that the heat "gradually retires behind the body...and forms what we call the tail."

By this means, he thought the tail moderated the temperature of the comet's body making it "comfortable to the 'inhabitants' that occupy it." Rodney thought his idea was ahead of his time. One day, he said, astronomers will better understand "the propriety of what I have here suggested..."