popocatetl (TR42v)

The Nahuas were (and are) skywatchers and stargazers. The ancient annals regularly feature events in the skies. To contextualize this event of a "smoking stone" (comet), consider this quote from Manuel Aguilar-Moreno published in Mexicolore: "‘The Aztec,’ writes Manuel Aguilar-Moreno, ‘like all peoples of Mesoamerica, were avid astronomers who carefully tracked the stars and planets at night. The two most important ritual hours to observe the sky were sunset and at midnight.’" Ian Mursell continues: "Sky watching was very much the domain of rulers, priests and the nobility - it was, after all, a subject of study in the élite calmecac school. Priest-astronomers assembled data on solstices, equinoxes, eclipses and other celestial phenomena methodically, using a simple method of observation, by taking regular visual bearings on a high mountain or distant temple tower. In this sense, mountains and temple-pyramids that ‘mirrored’ them, were particularly sacred due to their special alignment with stars appearing on the horizon."

The Florentine Codex conveys how the heavens or sky could be thought of as "a blue gourd bowl filled with popcorn." See: Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1961), 237.