MORE: Best times to see the first branch of the Taurid meteor shower Every year from September to November, the Earth passes ...

This image taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the comet Encke riding along its pebbly trail of debris. Every October, Earth passes through Encke's wake, resulting in the well-known ...

They all seem to come from a parent body, the short-period Comet 2P/Encke. Comet 2P/Encke was the second periodic comet to be discovered. And the first, you ask? Halley's Comet, of course.

Which was why, in 1903, the painter Fedor Encke hired a young photographer named Edward Steichen to take Morgan’s picture as a kind of cheat sheet for a portrait Encke was trying to finish.