While photographing the recently discovered comet Machholz the other night, Jimmy Westlake's mind wandered back to a mystery that'd been bugging him for years. On Jan. 1, 1986, he was photographing another comet, Halley's, through his homemade 8-inch reflecting telescope.

"About one minute into the exposure, I watched a meteor zip through the field of the telescope," said Westlake, a professor of physical sciences at Colorado Mountain College in Steamboat Springs, CO. "I stopped the exposure at two minutes."

That night, when he developed the roll of slide film, he was astounded at what he saw:

"Crossing the tail of Halley's comet was a corkscrew meteor trail with no fewer than 25 twists in it," he said. "I had read of some meteors appearing to have curves or kinks in their trails, but I had never seen a photo of one."

It's the picture above, and Halley's comet is the smudge under the corkscrew.

Years later Westlake ran across an old astronomy book by Camille Flammarion and happened upon a sketch someone had made of a daytime fireball trail that looked almost exactly like his corkscrew meteor, "including the dark-colored inner curls," he said.

Westlake's photo was never published until today. He wonders if there are others out there.

Oh, and that photo he took of comet Machholz the other night? It's pretty nifty, too. Here it is:

Photo Credit: Jimmy Westlake