VOL. XXX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 411 



60 geogr. miles without it; and that the point of the first explosion was over 

 the lat. of 50° 40', and 3° 40' to the west of London; and that of the last ex- 

 tinction over lat. 47° 40', with 4° 50' west longitude; the time being fixed to 

 8 minutes past 8 at London. Hence it will be easy, by a trigonometrical pro- 

 cess, to obtain the visible altitude and azimuth of the meteor at either of its 

 explosions, as seen from any place whose longitude and latitude is known; and 

 from the time given, the points in the sphere of stars answering to those azi- 

 muths and altitudes are readily deduced. And let those who contend for a 

 much less height of this meteor, try if they can on such their supposition 

 reconcile the several phaenomena with one another, and with the observation 

 of the Rev. Mr. Wm. Ella, rector of Rampton in Nottinghamshire, between 

 Gainsborough and Redford, which for its exactness I must not omit. Here, 

 at 8^ 5"^, the meteor was seen to pass precisely in the middle between Sirius 

 and the fore-foot of Canis Major, moving obliquely to the southward, in a 

 line whose direction seemed to be from the middle between the two shoulders 

 of Orion; the latitude of the place being nearly 53° 20', and long, west from 

 London 0° 45'. Let them try how they can account for its being seen 5° 

 high at Aberdeen in Scotland, and near as much at Peterhead, half a degree 

 more northerly: and then they will be better able to judge whether it did not 

 exceed the reputed limits of our atmosphere. Lastly, if the apparent altitude 

 of the meteor at Paris was not5-i-°, but 1 1°, on the W. b. N. point, when it must 

 have been in its greatest lustre, there will be no pretence to bring it lower than 

 I have made it, especially if it be allowed to have followed the track I have 

 assigned it, over Presteign, Cardiff, Minehead, Tiverton, and Brest in Bretany. 

 Allowing this to have been the path it moved in, it would be easy to assign 

 the real magnitude and velocity of this meteor, if the several accounts of its 

 apparent diameter, and of the time of its passage from one of its explosions to 

 the other, were consistent among themselves. But some of them making its 

 visible appearance nearly equal to the sun's, which in the opinion of many it 

 far exceeded, we may suppose with the least that, at the time when it first 

 broke out over Tiverton, its diameter was half a degree; and its horizontal 

 distance being 150 geogr. miles from London, and its altitude 6o, the hypo- 

 thenusal, or real distance from the eye, will be more than l6o such miles; to 

 which radius the subtense of half a degree will be above an English mile and 

 a half, being about 2800 yards nearly. After the same manner it is difficult to 

 assign its due velocity, while some make it half, others less than a quarter, of 

 a minute, in passing from its first explosion to its last extinction: but the dis- 

 tance it moved in that time being about 3°, or 180 geogr. miles, we may mo- 

 destly compute it to have run above 300 such miles in a minute; which is a 



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