Episode 3 of 4

First Comet Photography

Name: First Comet Photography
Start: 1858-09-27
Location: Walton-on-the-Hill, Surrey

When: 27 September 1858
Where: Walton-on-the-Hill, Surrey
Part of: Discovery of Comet Donati

W. Usherwood photographed the comet on 27 September, marking the first time a comet was photographed.

Comet Donati was successfully photographed on 27 September by W. Usherwood, a portrait photographer at Walton-on-the-Hill, Surrey. He used a 7-second exposure with an f/2.4 portrait lens. This event established the comet as the first to be photographed.

Sources

Comet Donati Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-03

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.