Comets in Wright's theory of the universe. The diagram compares the size of five comets to the Earth (top centre). The main illustration shows the comet of 1665. C is the comet of 1682, D of 1665, E of 1742 and F of 1744. This page is from 'An original theory or new hypothesis of the Universe' (1750) by English astronomer Thomas Wright (1711-1786). In this book Wright gave the first explanation of the appearance of the Milky Way as being due to our immersion in a layer of stars. He proposed that the Sun is one of many stars orbiting around a Divine Centre and that the stars are distributed either in annuli (rings) or in thin, concentric, spherical shells.