NA TURE 



[Dec. 3, 1885 



immediately confined to the night of November 27. In 

 Nature, vol. vii. p. 104, Prof. Herschel writes: — 



"On the evening of the 2Sth [November, 1872], Mr. 

 Greg watched for shooting-stars, and for any remnants of 

 the star-shower of the previous evening which might be 

 visible, but although the sky was quite clear, he failed to 

 see any meteors. A strict watch for outlying meteors 

 of the shower was also kept by two observers at Hawk- 

 hurst, in Kent, on the evening of the 28th, where the sky 

 was quite cloudless between gh. and llh. 15m. p.m., but 

 without success, only four shooting-stars of ordinary 

 character being visible." 



Prof. Herschel also quotes some observations proving 

 that on November 26 of that year, meteors were singu- 

 larly rare, and justly concludes from this that the display 

 was confined to an interval of forty-four hours. Now 

 the recent phenomenon was already a conspicuous shower 

 on the 25th, when it was observed at Bristol at about 

 8.30 p.m., and on the 28th, in a four-hours watch before 

 11.30, 55 Andromedes were counted in a cloudless 

 sky. We here have a period of fifty-one hours for its 

 observed duration, but there is not the slightest doubt 

 from the activity it exhibited at the opening and termi- 

 nation of the observations this year, that the shower must 

 have been probably visible both on November 24 and 25, 

 and also on the 29th. At Bristol the sky was overcast on 

 these dates, so that the progress of the display during its 

 complete rise and decadence could not be observed. It 

 is certain, however, that it extended over several nights, 

 and that its increase was more gradual, as in the case of 

 the August Perseids, than its decline. 



The outlying members of the shower observed at 

 Bristol in the very clear sky of November 28 this year 

 were extremely faint, the majority being of the 5th and 

 6th magnitude. It is therefore suggested that on the 

 environs of the denser part of the stream, the meteors are 

 of very diminutive size, and this may possibly have 

 enabled them to elude detection at places where the 

 atmosphere was not very clear. W. F. DENNING 



An extraordinarily bright display of Cassiopeiad shoot- 

 ing-stars occurred this evening, commencing, I am told, 

 as soon as darkness set in, at about five o'clock. The sky 

 was then cloudless here, but owing to street-lights I 

 missed observing them between five and seven, and until 

 informed of their appearance a little after half-past seven 

 o'clock. Reaching an open space, and looking up at 

 Cassiopeia, just overhead, I then counted about twenty 

 meteors, all with short courses near that constellation, in 

 the four minutes onwards from 7.40. Such a thick haze 

 overspread the sky except just round the zenith, that only 

 the bright stars of Cassiopeia and two in the Square of 

 Pegasus O Pegasi and n Andromedae) were visible there ; 

 but several first and second magnitude meteors of the 

 display which proceeded at the same rate until 7.50, left 

 streaks on their short courses visible for two or three 

 seconds through the haze, and these being sometimes 

 actually in sight in groups together, made the direction of 

 radiation very easy to determine. The thickening haze, 

 however, hid the stars so completely at the latter hour, 

 and afterwards, that further observations of the shower 

 for the night have proved fruitless. 



To my surprise, this active meteor-shower was diverg- 

 ing, not from the usual Biela radiant-point near y Andro- 

 meda;, but the short meteor-tracks all streamed away 

 Irom Cassiopeia ! This was conspicuous in the meteors 

 near Cassiopeia which travelled thence, as most of those 

 visible did, westwards and southwards towards the Square 

 of Pegasus across Honores Frederici, and eastwards and 

 northwards across Camelopardus and Custos Messium. 

 Although no faint stars in sight allowed their courses 

 there to be regularly mapped, yet, from such a short col- 

 lection of very good accordances for fixing it very nearly, 

 I would place the radiant-point (by rough eye-estimation 



only) very near «, or between f, i/, and d Cassiopeia, 

 which is about 15° from the Biela radiant-point near t 

 Andromedae. 



In his " Periodische Sternschnuppen," published at 

 Aix-la-Chapelle in 1849, Heis described a radiant-point 

 of several meteors seen there by him on the nights of 

 December S and 10, 1S47, between y and t Andromedse, 

 as a prominent one on those nights ; and on the evening 

 of November 30, 1S67, Zezioli, at Bergamo, mapped a 

 number of meteor-tracks, from which Prof. Schiaparelli 

 obtained a well-marked radiant-Doint position closely 

 agreeing, like Heis's, with the subsequent exact determin- 

 ation of the place of the " Andromede " star-shower's 

 radiant-point made by numerous observers of the 

 shower's great return on November 27, 1872. 



Besides the radiant '' A " in Andromeda, seen on the 

 nights of December 8 and 10, 1847, Heis also described, 

 in the same work, another, " C," close to a Cassiopeia?, as 

 conspicuous on the nights of November 12 and 13, in the 

 years from 1839 to 1847 ; and he notices that Danse 

 iComptes rcndus, vol. v. p. 759), on November 15, 1837, 

 observed a shower of seventeen shooting-stars in a rninute 

 and a half diverging from the constellation Cassiopeia. 

 In connection with the December epoch it is also noted 

 that of a large number of meteor-tracks observed by 

 Herrick at Newhaven, U.S., on December 7 and 8, 1838, 

 about three-quarters diverged from the principal stars of 

 Cassiopeia, and that Flaugergues, at Toulon, in France, 

 made a similar observation on December 6 of the same 

 year, 42 meteors, about 9 o'clock, falling vertically from 

 the zenith, and 31 of them on nearly parallel courses 

 from about Cassiopeia's place in it (as the account 

 implies) between the IVIilky Way and the Square of 

 Pegasus. 



Although the connection of this " Cassiopeiad " stream 

 with Biela's comet would seem, from the position of its 

 radiant-point, to be somewhat doubtful, yet the occurrence 

 now, as it appears, of a shower with nearly the same 

 radiant point on the night of the famous Biela star- 

 shower's date in 1872, makes the probability much greater 

 than before that the " Cassiopeiads " of December 6 to 10 

 and the " Andromedes " of Heis, belonging to the same 

 date and to November 27 to 30, may not be unassociated 

 star-showers, but that both may possibly have had their 

 origin in some bygone disruptions of Biela's comet ! 

 The position of this star-shower's radiant-point will, it is 

 to be hoped, have been determined accurately by more 

 fortunate observers than myself of its very striking 

 apparition, so as, if it befits them, to corroborate these 

 slight observations generally, and to fix the shovver's 

 centre of divergence with the astronomical position 

 which is most desirable from these suggestive indi- 

 cations. 



Four Leonids, varying from first to third magnitude 

 stars in brightness, and leaving no streaks, were seen 

 here between 2.10 and 2.50 a.m. on the 15th inst., to- 

 gether with two small sporadic meteors, in a clear 

 moonless sky. They indicated plainly, by the accordant 

 radiation outwards on a map of their long swift courses, 

 from a moderately wide area in Leo's Sickle, a slender 

 recurrence of that great star-shower this year. Its 

 maximum now appears to present itself at least as dis- 

 tinctly on the morning of the isth, as on that of 

 the 14th of November, as the nodal line of the meteor- 

 stream advances. Its short-lived displays, it may be 

 gathered from this regular progression, need scarcely 

 now be looked for any longer, on that account, on either 

 of the historically famous dates of the 12th and 13th of 

 November, of its once pre-eminently grand and imposing 

 exhibitions, while a centenary view of one of those is not 

 actually now a very distant event to look forward to on a 

 coming 15th of November morning in the year 1899. 



A. S. Herschel 



Newcastle-on-Tyne, November 27 



