SHOOTING STARS. 573 



have made known. Both these circumstances, divergence and 

 velocity, characterize them with a high degree of probability 

 as luminous bodies which present themselves independently 

 of the Earth's rotation, and penetrate into our atmosphere 

 from ivitliout, from space. The North American observations 

 of the November period on the occasion of the falls of stars in 

 1833, 1834, and 1837, indicated as the point of departure the 

 star 7 Leonis ; the observations of the August phenomenon, 

 in the year 1839, Algol in Perseus, or a point between Perseus 

 and Taurus. These centres of divergence were about the con- 

 stellations towards which the Earth moved at the same epoch. 10 

 Saigey, who has submitted the American observations of 1833 

 to a very accurate investigation, remarks that the fixed radia- 

 tion from the constellation Leo, is only observed properly 

 after midnight, in the last 3 or 4 hours before daybreak ; that 

 of eighteen observers between the town of Mexico and Lake 

 Huron, only ten perceived the same general point of depar- 

 ture of the meteors, 11 which Denison Olmsted, Professor of 

 Mathematics in Newhaven (Massachusetts,) indicated. 



The excellent work of Edward Heis of Aix-la-Chapelle, 

 which presents in a condensed form the very accurate obser- 

 vations of falling stars made by himself during ten years, con- 

 tains results as to the phenomena of divergence, which are so 

 much the more important as the observer has discussed them 

 with mathematical strictness. According to him, 12 ' ' the falling 

 stars of the November period present the peculiarity that their 

 paths are more dispersed than those of the August period. 



10 Cosmos, vol. i. p. 105-106. 



11 Coulvier-Gravier and Saigey, Eeclierches sur les Etoiles 

 filantes, 1847, pp. 69-86. 



12 " The periodical falling stars and the results of the pheno- 

 mena deduced from the observations carried on during the 

 last ten years at Aix-la-Chapelle by Edward Heis," 1849, 

 pp. 7 and 26-30. 



