40 



ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA AND PROGRESS. 



At Cambridgeport, Mass., where watch was 

 kept by Mr. E. F. Sawyer, the number of me- 

 teors observed was not extraordinary. The 

 night of the 10th, however, was quite over- 

 cast, and those of the 9th and llth were more 

 or less cloudy. 



METEORS OF OCTOBER 20th. At Washing- 

 ton, Ind., on the morning of October 20th, 

 thirty meteors were counted by Professor D. 

 E. Hunter, from 4 h> to 4 h - 30 m -. Twenty-three 

 of this number had their radiant in Gemini. 



METEORS OF NOVEMBER 14th. On the morn- 

 ing of November 14th, Mr. D. E. Hunter, Prin- 

 cipal of the Washington High-School, Wash- 

 ington, Ind., watched for meteors from 3 h- 10 m ' 

 to 5 h< ll m '. The number seen in successive 

 half-hours was as follows : 



During the first hour Mr. Hunter had four as- 

 sistants, and during the second three. The 

 visible paths of the Leonids were unusually 

 short thirty not exceeding 10 in length. 

 The morning of the 15th was cloudy. 



LARGE METEORS. Meteoric fire-balls were 

 observed during 1882 at the following dates : 



March 9th, at ll h - P.M. This meteor was 

 seen by a party of five gentlemen about eight 

 miles northeast of Warsaw, Kosciusko Coun- 

 ty, Ind. The sky was entirely covered with 

 clouds, and snow was rapidly falling. Conse- 

 quently the meteor could not be seen till it 

 had passed below the clouds. The report of 

 its explosion was distinctly heard at Warsaw, 

 the county-seat, and excited much attention, 

 from the fact of its occurring during a heavy 

 snow-storm. (Observatory, July, 1882.) 



March 12th, 8 h - p. M. A large, violet-colored 

 meteor was seen near Haren, Netherlands, in 

 the southwest. 



March 13th, !" A.M. A large, detonating 

 meteor was seen near Groningen. On the 

 same night, and at the same hour, another 

 fire-ball was observed near the village of Ber- 

 gen, in North Holland. (Nature, July, 1882.) 



March 12th, 9 h - 25 m -, p. M. A very brilliant 

 fire-ball was seen at Cambridge, Mass. It 

 appeared near the zenith, and vanished at an 

 altitude of 65, its course being from south- 

 east to northwest. It consisted of two nuclei, 

 one following the other. (Science Observer. 

 July, 1882.) 



May 4th, 9 h - 31 m - p. M. A meteor "as brill- 

 iant as the full moon " was seen at Stonyhurst 

 Observatory, and at other points in England. 

 It appeared near Arcturus, and moved through 

 Ursa Major, passing between the stars Delta 

 and Epsilon. It was visible five seconds. 

 (Nature, June 8th.) 



May 16th, 1T> A.M. A large meteor was 



seen at the University of Oxford, England. It 

 appeared 5 above the main cluster of Co- 

 ma, passed a little above Iota, in the Great 

 Bear, and vanished 5 to the left of Beta 

 Auriga? ; time of flight between eight and ten 

 seconds. A few minutes later another was 

 seen, describing very nearly the same path. 

 (Nature, May 25.) 



June 24th, 9 h - 33 m> A magnificent meteor 



was observed by many persons at Wilmington 



^and other points in North Carolina. It ex- 



'ploded with a loud detonation over Lenoir 



County. 



September 3d, at 9 h - 10 m> p. M. A large me- 

 teor was seen by H. Corder, of Great Baddow, 

 England. It appeared "just below Lacerta, 

 and, passing Polaris, disappeared with a flash 

 near the tail of Draco." 



September 10th. At 8 h - 25 m - p. M., Messrs. 

 O. and E. Corder saw from the cliff of Lowes- 

 toft, England, a meteor which seemed to start 

 in the east from a point about 20 above the 

 horizon and move to the zenith, where it ex- 

 ploded. The head was pear-shaped and nearly 

 as large as the moon. 



VARIABLE STARS. In the " Science Observ- 

 er," No. 35, December 15, 1881, Mr. Edwin F. 

 Sawyer, of Boston, announced the discovery 

 of a new variable. Its position for 1882-0 is 

 right ascension I7 h - 10 m - 33 s - declination 1 20' 

 36" north. The character of its variations as- 

 signed it to the small but very interesting class 

 of short period variables of which Algol is the 

 type; the period, according to Mr. Sawyer's 

 observations, being about five days and six 

 hours. The same journal for July 12, 1882, 

 contains the result of late observations of the 

 same star by Mr. S. C. Chandler, of the Cam- 

 bridge (Mass.) Observatory. Mr. Chandler 

 has demonstrated that the period is but 20 h - 

 T m ' 42"- instead of 5-24 days, and that all the 

 variations take place in one fifth of this time, 

 or in about four hours. " In several respects, 

 Mr. Sawyer's star ranks as the most remarka- 

 ble in the list of known variables. Its period 

 is the shortest of any, and very much shorter 

 than any of the peculiar class to which it be- 

 longs, known as the Algol type. Not only 

 this, but the portion of its period to which 

 the variations are confined is also far the 

 shortest of any." 



The " Observatory," for March, 1882, con- 

 tains a second paper by Mr. T. E. Espin on the 

 distribution of the variable stars. In his for- 

 mer paper on this subject it was shown that 

 the variables are confined for the most part to 

 a well-marked zone inclined 15 or 20 to the 

 equator. His later discussions furnish some 

 remarkable conclusions in regard to the peri- 

 ods of variation. Thus "if we tabulate the 

 number of stars in each ten days up to periods 

 of 440 days, we find 



" 1. There are no stars with periods between 

 VI and 135 days. 



" 2. No such gap occurs elsewhere, nor is 

 there any sign of such. 



