476 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



in Nebraska and South Dakota. Accounts of the direction of motion of 

 the meteor vary greatly, due probably to the different angles from which 

 it was viewed by the observers. The flash was distinctly seen by ob- 

 servers as remote as Fayette, in the northeastern portion of the State, 

 Des Moines and Omaha, but no noises were heard at those places. A 

 trail of smoke marked the path of the meteor for ten or fifteen minutes, 

 when it dissipated without showing any direction of the higher air cur- 

 rents. A piece of material believed to have been a fragment of the meteor 

 was found in the barnyard of E. Vander Hoop, a farmer living two miles 

 north of Sioux Center, Iowa, and another similar piece was found near 

 Osmond, Neb., by N. Welch, an auctioneer. The specimens were of identi- 

 cal appearance, resembling coarse grained baked clay, the outer surface 

 of which had been molten and burned to a crisp brown. 



While meteors have no appreciable effect on weather and belong to the 

 science of astronomy rather than meteorology, the intense popular inter- 

 est in this instance justifies more than ordinary consideration. Ptiblished 

 herewith is the report of Mr. David E. Hadden, Fellow of the Royal 

 Astronomical Society, and Corn and Wheat Region Observer of the United 

 States Weather Bureau, at Alta, Iowa. Being both an astronomer and 

 a meteorologist, his report is doubtly interesting. 



DETONATING METEOR. 

 David E. Hadden, F. R. A. S., Alta, Iowa. 



Date, Thursday, May 31, 1917. 



Time of flash, 9:55 p. m. 



Time of report 10 p. m. — five minutes' interval. 



Location — ^Meteor first appeared some distance west of the zenith and 

 traced a path through constellation Leo. A minute after the flash the 

 location was easily observed by a bright streak about ten degrees in 

 length directly below the star Epsilon of Leo, the right ascension of \jb" 

 streak was about 9h 27m and declination north 15 degrees. The strea. 

 was nearly parallel to a line drawn from the star Gamma Leonis to 

 Alpha Leonis. The streak indicated approximately the location of the 

 explosions, two in number, which followed each other rapidly and created 

 much excitement. Reports indicate that the flash was observed over a 

 radius of 100' miles, but the explosions were heard only about sixty or 

 seventy miles. 



Fire-balls, or aerolites as these meteors are called when they are large 

 enough to explode and reach the earth, come from inter-planetary space, 

 and when they reach the earth's atmosphere at about eighty miles above 

 the earth's surface they either take fire or soon disappear, or take fire 

 and burst in numerous fragments or fall to the ground as solid masses 

 of stony matter fused with numerous metallic elements familiar to ua 

 on the earth. 



Explosions take place from ten or fifteen to thirty-five miles above 

 the earth's surface as a rule. At this height sound travels 700 or 800 

 feet a second, so that the distance of the explosion of the meteorite of 



