26 



ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA AND PROGRESS. 



twilight, in England, on the 6th of July, at 8 h - 

 60- Its coarse was from northeast to east, at 

 an altitude of 27 when first seen, and 22 

 when it disappeared. Its motion was slow ; 

 the duration of visibility being six or seven 

 seconds. When first seen, its form was globu- 

 lar, but in a second or two it became elongated 

 as though the change were produced by the 

 resistance of the atmosphere. Its color was 

 at first a deep red, afterward a golden hue, and 

 just before disappearance, a brilliant white. 



A meteor of intense brilliance was seen at 

 many points in New Zealand at 4 h> 46 m- P.M., 

 on July 12th. At Ohinitahi it was seen moving 

 slowly from the west in an easterly direction, 

 at an altitude of about 45. Its appearance 

 was in broad daylight. 



A meteoric fire-ball was seen in England at 

 8"- 25 m - on the evening of August llth. It 

 moved easterly, and its color was a deep ame- 

 thyst. 



A beautiful meteor, considerably brighter 

 than Venus, was seen in different parts of Eng- 

 land about ten o'clock on the evening of Au- 

 gust 19th. As seen near London by A. J. Mott, 

 " it passed along the eastern sky and vanished 

 over the summit of the Little Orme. The path 

 was northward, nearly horizontal, apparently 

 much foreshortened, for the motion was very 

 slow not faster than that of balls falling from 

 a rocket; white light, slightly tinged with blue. 

 The meteor divided, and left one large and 

 several smaller portions behind it, all vanish- 

 ing together." According to Mr. Mott, the 

 meteor did not reach the earth, but after skim- 

 ming through the upper atmosphere at an alti- 

 tude of about seventy miles passed onward in 

 its orbit. 



A splendid meteor was seen near London, 

 Eng., about nine o'clock on the evening of 

 October 6th. It passed from the northeast, 

 beneath the pole-star, to the west, where it 

 vanished instantaneously without bursting. 

 The nucleus measured at least five minutes of 

 arc in breadth, and was extremely brilliant. 



Moleorif Showers. So far as reported, no me- 

 teoric showers of any considerable note oc- 

 curred during 1883. The numbers seen were 

 small both in January and April ; while the 

 showers of August and November almost 

 totally failed. At Great Badow, Eng., H. Cor- 

 der kept watch on the nights of the 9th, 

 10th, and llth of August, with the following 

 results : On the 9th, in two hours and forty- 

 five minutes, 61 Perseids were counted, or 22 

 an hour. On the 10th, 113 were seen in two 

 hours. On the llth he watched the whole 

 night, counting 157 Perseids in five honrs; the 

 highest number in an hour being 43. The 

 radiant was in 46 R. A., and 56 N. declina- 

 tion. 



Telescopic Meteors. In March, 1883, W. F. 

 Denning, of Bristol, Eng., observed a num- 

 ber of telescopic meteors of the eighth or ninth 

 magnitude. These, as well as those seen dur- 

 ing former observations, were generally remark- 



able for the slowness of their motion a fact 

 probably due to their distance. 



Double Stars. In the " Sidereal Messenger '' 

 for November, 1883, S. W. Burnham has dis- 

 cussed the observations, by himself and oth- 

 ers, of the double star Delta Equulei. The 

 principal star of this wide pair is itself an ex- 

 cessively close binary system, the components 

 of which are very nearly equal. Mr. Burnham 

 finds the probable period a little less than 

 eleven years much shorter than that of any 

 other binary star now known shorter even 

 than the. period of Jupiter. Mr. Burnham re- 

 marks that " by reason of the rapid orbital 

 motion of this close pair, and its movement 

 through space, this is undoubtedly the most 

 important and interesting of all the sidereal 

 systems which have been investigated." 



On the evening of October 5th, Prof. C. 

 A. Young, of Princeton, discovered the du- 

 plicity of a star in right ascension 16 h - 29 m - 

 26-3 8 -, declination N. 58 00' 49-9". The com- 

 ponents are of magnitudes 8 and 9|. 



The last report of the Astronomer Royal, 

 W. H. M. Christie, contains some interesting 

 results derived from a discussion of the obser- 

 vations of Sirius from 1877 to 1883. A few 

 years since, the spectroscope indicated a rapid 

 recession of this star in the line of sight. A 

 comparison of observations, however, has led 

 to the conclusion that its rate of departure has 

 progressively diminished during the past six 

 years, and that the motion is now on the point 

 of being converted into one of approach a 

 fact which seems incapable of any explanation 

 except on the theory of orbital motion. 



Parallax of Certain Stars. Prof. Asaph Hall, 

 Director of the Naval Observatory, Washing- 

 ton, D. 0., has recently completed a series of 

 observations for determining the annual paral- 

 lax, and hence the distance, of Alpha Lyras and 

 61 Cygni. In his reduction of these observa- 

 tions, Dr. Hall was assisted by Prof. Edgar 

 Frisby. The resulting value of the parallax of 

 the former star is 0*1 797", corresponding to a 

 distance more than a million times greater than 

 that of the sun from the earth. The parallax of 

 61 Cygni was found to be 0-4783", and hence its 

 distance is about 380,000 times that of the sun. 

 This value is very nearly identical with that 

 deduced from a series of Dunsink observations 

 extending over a much longer period. The 

 probable error is small in each determination. 



At the session of the Astronomical Congress 

 in Vienna, September 14-16, 1883, Dr. Elkin 

 reported the result of some parallax determi- 

 nations, at the Cape of Good Hope by Mr. Gill 

 and himself; particularly of Sirius and Alpha 

 Centauri. The observers found the annual 

 parallax of the former four tenths of a second, 

 and that of the latter three fourths. 



Mean Parallax of Stars of the First Magnitude. 

 Dr. Gylden, of Stockholm, has been lately en- 

 gaged in a series of observations for finding 

 the annual parallax of the brightest stars. The 

 reduction has not yet been completed, but Dr, 



