84 report — 1879. 



a direction nearly due N.E. towards SW. This corresponds at the time- 

 and place of the meteor's disappearance to a celestial position of the- 

 radiant point at 174° + 56°, near y Ursae Majoris. Of its real speed of 

 motion exact enough observations of the fireball's time of flight were not 

 obtained to afford a satisfactory determination. From the nearest point 

 of view at Wooster, Ohio, a disruption of the nucleus was seen about 20° 

 along its course before its point of disappearance, of which no mention 

 is made in the account at Washington (much further from the real 

 track), so that the fragments into which the meteor then broke appear 

 to have been unseen (as was also the case in distant observations of the 

 large fireball of August 11, 1878) at the more distant station. The final 

 height determined is that of the disruption seen at Wooster, and it seems 

 probable that the fragments pursued their course and penetrated while 

 in sight to a still closer proximity than that deduced above of 17 or 18 

 miles, to the surface of the earth. 



1879, January 12, 7 h 25 m and 7 h 32 m p.m., Berlin time ; large fire- 

 balls, the first detonating, seen in Bohemia and Saxony. — Of these two 

 fireballs, which appeared within a few minutes of each other, Professor von 

 Niessl collected a large number of accounts sufficiently exact and definite- 

 in their descriptions, in spite of cloudy skies on the date of their appearance, 

 to enable him to assign their real courses with precision. 1 The two 

 meteors pursued real courses over the middle of Bohemia, nearly at right 

 angles to each other, the first extremely large and detonating, the second 

 a much smaller meteor, but also casting a strong light. It was hence 

 simply observed in some of the locally described accounts that the par- 

 ticulars furnished by various observers were too contradictory and op- 

 posed to each other to be worth recording in detail ; the detonation of 

 the first meteor seems also to have been sometimes ascribed to the second 

 one, with whose appearance, at some places, it must have occurred almost 

 simultaneously. But both meteors were well seen and described by at 

 least one single observer (the railway station-master at Neucunnersdorf ) , 

 and exact descriptions, at other places, of the two meteors present no 

 confusion, and could in general be easily distinguished and separated 

 from each other. 



The nucleus of the first meteor, as seen from a distance, was globular, 

 resembling the moon's disc in apparent size (and perhaps also in colour, 

 which was not noted), followed by a thin tail, and bursting at last into 

 sparks, while a portion pursued its career and was visible for a short 

 distance further. It cast a light as strong as that of a moonlight night 

 over the greater part of Bohemia, and as bright as daylight in the streets- 

 of Prague. The sound of its explosion in that city was like a sudden 

 thunderclap, of 3-20 seconds duration, heard in a minute and a half after 

 the meteor's disappearance, shaking doors and windows, and rattling 

 together objects placed on shelves and tables, and even according to one 

 description at Rostock, near Prague, breaking window-panes. The time- 

 interval of the sound probably corresponds to a distance (about 18 miles) 

 of the nearest point of the meteor's track from Prague, rather than to- 

 that (about 27 miles) of its end-point from the town. 



The fireball ended its course at a height of only 9 miles, nearly over 

 Rakonitz, due west of Prague, where it seems to have arrived by a flight 

 of somewhat uncertainly determined length from the direction of a 



' Sitziingsberichte of the Imperial Academy of Sciences of Vienna, vol. 79, May 8,. 

 1879. Excerpt of 22 pages, from the author. 





