METEORS. 



517 



about 43 N. Decl. and 25 E. A., but the area 

 of emanation seemed to be as much as 8 long. 

 At Rochester, N. Y., the night of the 27th, 51 

 meteors were counted in an hour and a half, 

 all but one radiating from Samma Andromedaa. 

 They were mostly small, and moved more 

 slowly than ordinary meteors. At Philadel- 

 phia, the same night, meteors were observed 

 at the rate of 300 an hour. The color of the 

 larger ones was yellowish, and brilliancy mod- 

 erate, few, if any, equalling a star of the first 

 magnitude ; trains scarce, and none of them 

 persistent. The observers at Haddonfield, 

 N. J., the same night, made out about 20 a 

 minute. At Greencastle, Ind., 110 were noted 

 in 40 minutes. Government observers at 

 Washington carefully studied the phenome- 

 non. Rear- Admiral Sands made the following 

 report to the Secretary of the Navy, of the 

 work done on the night of the 27th of No- 

 vember : 



I have the honor to report that last night, being 

 clear, a fine display of meteors was observed by 

 Prof. Eastman and Mr. Horrigan, watchman of the 

 observatory. In the early evening, Prof. Eastman 

 being occupied in other duties, Mr. Horrigan ob- 

 served 485 meteors between 6 h 15 m and 8 p. M. From 

 8 to 9 h P.M., Prof. Eastman observed part of the 

 time, and 131 were seen; after 9 h , P. M., 100 more 

 were seen, and at 10 h , p. M., the display seemed to 

 cease. The maximum flight appears to have been 

 between the hours of 6 h 15 IQ and 6 h 30 m , reaching an 

 hourly rate of 102 in 15 minutes, and of 400 in 8 

 minutes. Mr. Horrigan saw 10 before he com- 

 menced the above record, making the whole number 

 observed 720. They appeared to radiate, by Prof. 

 Eastman's observation, from a space which might 

 be enclosed by a circle of eight degrees in diameter, 

 having its centre at M Andromedje. Prof. Harkness 

 also observed, but differs a little as to the point of 

 radiance, placing it about half-way between /. and y 

 Andromedas. As there was but a single observer in 

 the early evening, whose attention was confined to 

 one portion of the heavens, there were probably 

 four and a half times as many fell as were oDserved. 

 According to Prof. JIarkness's observations, the most 

 of the meteors were about of the fourth magnitude. 

 The color to the naked eye was generally faint blue, 

 but some of the larger were reddish. The tracks 

 were generally very short, not exceeding from four 

 degrees to six degrees. The average time of flight 

 was from one to two-tenths of a second. Prof. 

 Eastman succeeded in catching the spectra of two 

 email ones. The first had a faint continuous spec- 

 trum, with an excess of yellow or greenish yellow ; 

 the second had a faint green spectrum, the first 

 glimpse of which appeared perfectly white. They 

 were both very faint and moved rapidly. This dis- 

 play is a very remarkable one, and exceeds that or- 

 dinarily seen on the 14th and 15th of November. 

 The radiant point seems to indicate that they are 

 moving in the orbit of Biela's comet. 



Prof. A. Hall, of Washington, computed the 

 parabolic orbit of the stream by the formulas 

 of Dr. Weiss, and found the elements of the 

 meteors and of Biela's comet nearly identical. 



Prof. H. A. Newton, author of the paper in 

 the American Journal of Science, makes the 

 following general remarks, among others, on 

 the display : 



Dr. "Weiss, of Vienna, who first pointed out, in 

 1868, the probable connection between Biela's comet 

 and the meteors seen December 6, 1798, by Brandes, 



and December 6, 1838, by Mr. Herrick, gives the 

 radiant, for meteors following the path of that com- 

 et, as K. A., 23.4, N. Decl., 43. 0. I assigned a 

 point 3 from Samma Andromedse as the centre of 

 the radiant of the meteors, or about K. A., 25. 3, N. 

 Decl., 43. 3. The longitude of the node of Biela's 

 comet was in 1852, according to Hubbard, 245 51', 

 and the comet would pass about a million of miles 

 from the earth's orbit^ between it and the sun. We 

 passed that place of the node early Wednesday 

 evening, November 27th. There can hardly be a 

 doubt, therefore, that these meteors were once frag- 

 ments, or companions, of that comet. 



Any theory that shall explain the formation of the 

 present grouping of meteoroids must account for the 

 magnitude and shape of the radiant areas. If the 

 members of a group have nearly the same orbit, the 

 radiant should be a point. But the area of the 

 radiant, November 24-27th, was at least 8 long. 

 This implies that the orbits differ considerably, 

 either (1) in their inclinations to the ecliptic ; (2) in 

 their major axes ; (3) in the longitude of perihelion ; 

 or, in two or three of these elements combined. 



The shower ended abruptly, Wednesday evening, 

 and in the clear evenings that followed nothing 

 special was to be seen. Similarly marked limits are 

 not uncommon in other showers. The orbits must 

 then either lie approximately in a plane, or there 

 must be a common node in the ecliptic, where the 

 earth meets them. Such a node would point une- 

 quivocally to the earth, as the body that originally 

 scattered the comet. 



The exhibition in England was far less 

 brilliant than in the United States. At Bir- 

 mingham, the highest number of flights per 

 minute was 12' to 15. Near Durham, almost 

 1,000 were noted in two hours. An overcast 

 sky at London prevented favorable observa- 

 tions. The duration of the shower in Eng- 

 land was estimated at about 44 hours. 



The most striking displays of which accounts 

 have been published were those in Southeast- 

 ern Europe, on the night of November 27th. 

 The British consul at Athens says that at ten 

 o'clock, when the storm was at its height, me- 

 teors fell at about the rate of 120 a minute, 

 after which they diminished to 60 a minute. 

 They seemed to drop perpendicularly from the 

 zenith in all directions, and were most numer- 

 ous at a point a little to the southwest of the 

 Pleiades, and were of all sizes, from a slender, 

 thread-like line of light to a brilliant rocket- 

 like stream of fire. The shower at Alexandria 

 reached a maximum of 200 a minute, and many 

 of the meteors appeared as large as Jupiter in 

 apposition, and left long trains of light behind 

 them. Mr. W. B. Shasto gives the following 

 graphic description of the exhibition at Suez, 

 in a letter to the London Times : 



A meteor-shower of great splendor was seen here 

 on the night of the 27th of November, between the 

 hours of 6 P. M. and midnight. 



The sky at the time was remarkably free from 

 cloud and" mist, and, as there was no moon, the dis- 

 play was witnessed under the most favorable circum- 

 stances. Soon after dark, attention was attracted to 

 the unusual number of shooting-stars visible in every 

 direction, and it soon became apparent that our 

 earth was passing through a meteor-stream almost 

 equal in grandeur to that observed in November, 

 1866. From 7 to 7.15 P. M. the number appearing in 

 the southwest alone was reckoned at 410,_ and, as this 

 was scarcely a quarter of the number which was fall- 

 ing in other parts of the sky, it can be well imagined 



