Bygone DePaul is a series highlighting DePaul’s campus and how it has changed through the years.
One of the most exciting periods in DePaul University’s history occurred in 1909 and 1910, when Rev. Daniel McHugh was the first Chicagoan to sight Halley’s Comet (Halley’s Comet is a periodic comet, and returns to Earth every 75 or 76 years). McHugh was born in 1877 in Illinois, ordained in 1906, and assigned to teach at DePaul University in 1908. He taught classes in astronomy, philosophy, chemistry and psychology.
In 1909, DePaul was still a very new University (it was founded in 1898). The Academy Building (now Byrne Hall) had been built in 1906 with an Observatory on top to be used for astronomy classes. in 1909, comet fever gripped the world and curiosity abounded. Daniel McHugh saw the comet on November 26th, 1909, by using a telescope in DePaul’s Observatory. He was the first person in Chicago to see it. However, some controversy occurred: a professor from Northwestern claimed that he had seen it first, and others wrote to McHugh stating that it was impossible that he could have seen the comet so early.
Nevertheless, McHugh soon became one of the acknowledged authorities on the comet in Chicago. Around the time the comet was supposed to become visible to the naked eye, Chicago was plagued by a week of cloudy days. Excitement magnified and everyone wondered who would be the lucky person to see it first. Fr. Daniel McHugh was also the first to see the comet without the use of a telescope; this occurred on April 20, 1910, around 3:50 in the morning. Halley’s Comet reached its perihelion on that same day. On May 18th, its 100,000,000 mile tail passed by our planet. Due to the sensational nature of the media at the time, there was mass worry that the comet might collide with the Earth, or that the entire planet would be killed by cyanogen gasses from the tail. The Hammond, IN Times newspaper on May 18th had the headline: “YOU ARE NOW IN THE COMET’S TAIL, BUT FEAR NOT- If this is the last edition of THE TIMES we wish you a fond farewell.”
Daniel McHugh was able to soothe some fears in Chicago by lecturing, writing and giving radio talks about the science surrounding Halley’s Comet. This was the first time that scientists were able to use relatively modern equipment to study it; the first photographs of Halley’s Comet come from 1910. McHugh’s work with the Comet brought a great deal of Chicago-area recognition to DePaul. In his later years, he served as the first University Archivist. Though many DePaul students weren’t alive for the last sighting of Halley’s Comet in 1985, theres no need to worry- we’ll see it again on July 28th, 2061!
Contact DePaul’s University Archives for more information.