234. Mr. J. Glaisher on the Meteor of February 11, 1850. 



some part of the building might have taken fire ; this occupied 

 a second or two of time. Guided by a similar impulse, I 

 wheeled round, and luckily I was just in time to observe 

 what appeared to be an exploding ball of fire, similar in ap- 

 pearance to the representation in the London Newspaper, of 

 the meteor as seen from the Fulham Road. To me it ap- 

 peared to be falling in an easterly direction, at an angle of 

 about 25° to the horizon. The meteor seemed to be suddenly 

 extinguished in a clump of trees a little distance off, and to 

 the S.E. of where I stood : as near as I can judge, the illumina- 

 tion lasted about 6". The whole surrounding landscape was 

 rendered distinctly visible. One of the Duke's huntsmen, 

 who was about 100 paces from me when the meteor first ap- 

 peared, and who ran up to me in great agitation, said that he 

 could see my person as distinctly as if it had been noonday." 



These are all the accounts I have seen upon this body, 

 which must have been of considerable magnitude to have 

 yielded light sufficient to illuminate every place situated within 

 the distance of 200 miles of it. I hope yet to receive more 

 information, as its course is by no means clear. The observer 

 at Yeovil says that he saw its commencement, at an altitude 

 of 60° fully, but he has omitted to stale the direction in which 

 he was looking. At Bath it is stated to have been eastward 

 of the city ; if both these accounts be correct, the meteor, if 

 visible so soon, must have been vertical over parts of Wilt- 

 shire and Gloucestershire, but this does not seem to have been 

 the case from the accounts from other places; I shall, there- 

 fore, not proceed to inquire into its true path, its figure, or 

 its magnitude at present, but confine myself to an investiga- 

 tion of its distance from the earth at the time of its explosion. 



The best data we have for this determination are from the 

 observations of the Astronomer Royal at Greenwich, of the 

 Rev. H. Highton at Rugby, and of William Lawton, Esq. 

 at Hull. Assuming that the chord distance from Greenwich 

 to Rugby is 86 miles, and that from Rugby to Hull is 105 

 miles, and that the radius of the earth is 20,970,260 feet ; that 

 the altitude of the meteor at Greenwich was 14° 53' above the 

 north horizon, and that at Hull was ]2° above the south ho- 

 rizon, and that the meteor was vertical at Rugby, — the ex- 

 plosion took place at the distance of 23'2 miles from the earth, 

 from the observations at Greenwich and Rugby, and at the 

 distance of 23*3 miles from those of Hull and Rugby. 



After a careful review of all the particulars, I shall give 

 some additional results in another paper. 



