136 



REPORT 187". 



paper might have been read for some time by its light, as it passed along ; 

 and it was remarkable for its sustained brilliancy at Bath, Bristol, Ciren- 

 cester, Swansea, Oxford, Rochdale, at Douglas in the Isle of Man, and at 

 Cookstown, near Loch Neagh, in Ireland. Its course was noted at the Rad- 

 cliffe Observatory, Oxford ; and here, as at other more western places over 

 which its course began, it was followed without extinction to the N.W. ho- 

 rizon. The observation at Douglas enables the radiant-point to be deter- 

 mined, to which the observations in the S.W. of England only point back- 

 wards by a nearly common line. As seen to commence, from the new pier, 

 over Douglas Head, and to skirt the high ground of that southern headland 

 of the bay before coming into clearer view westwardly over the town, the 

 altitude of its horizontal motion westwards from the point of origin nearly 

 due south cannot have much exceeded 30°, the apparent altitude assigned by 

 Mr. Binney. If by a reduction which no eye-estimations of altitude near 

 the horizon can dispense with, 25° or even 20° is substituted for the real 

 altitude at which the meteor started horizontally westwards at Douglas from 

 the south meridian, the position for the radiant-point is obtained (by inter- 

 section with the other projected courses) which is entered in the Table, and 

 which agrees without discordance with the place which had already been as- 

 signed to it generally and independently from their common intersection. 

 The place so found (at 310°, —10°) agrees well with a known radiant centre 

 for August in Aquarius, close to which the radiant-point of a bright fireball 

 seen on the 10th of August, 1874, was already found to be situated (as de- 

 scribed last year in these Reports), at 313°, — 14°, near u, e Aquarii. The 

 velocity (like that of the fireball there described, of 19 miles per second) 

 agrees with the theoretical velocity of bodies moving in a parabolic orbit with 

 this radiant-point. 



The President of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, Mr. 

 E. W. Binney, who obliged the Committee with the present details of his ob- 

 servation of the meteor at Douglas, has also kindly communicated two other 

 observations, which it is difficult to reconcile with those of this large meteor, 

 but which may yet indicate that it pursued its course to a considerable 

 distance over Ireland. The annexed map of Douglas town and Bay repre- 

 sents the point (a) on the New Pier from which Mr. Binney relates that he 

 obtained the first view of the 

 meteor in the direction a b, 

 commencing its course over 

 the New Hotel, whence it 

 took its flight westward, 

 skirting the hills of Douglas 

 Head (whose elevation is 

 about 300 or 400 feet), until 

 it passed clear of them, and 

 pursuing its way over 

 Douglas town, appeared to 

 him to vanish in the north- 

 west near the horizon. Some 

 friends who saw the meteor 

 from near the New Hotel 

 also followed it in view until 

 it disappeared over Port 

 Anne Hotel (c in the sketch), 

 which is nearly in the same , ** 



[Scale, one mile to an incli.l 



