OBSERVATIONS OF LUMINOUS METEOBS. 47 



The teeming multitude of accounts preserved of the great fireball of 

 December 5, 1863, again, as noticed in the paragraph just following those 

 relating to the above two shooting-stars, are unavailable (although stre- 

 nuous attempts to interpret them were made in contemporary reviews) 

 to furnish anything of sufficient certainty regarding the real direction of 

 that splendid fireball's flashing, perhaps abruptly deviating and deflected 

 course, to form a record worth placing and including for preservation in 

 the present list. 



The provisional radiant-point adopted in the paragraph of the same 

 Report-Appendix next following those just noticed, on the real path of 

 the shooting-star (No. 29) of Dec. 6, 1863, is placed, without much 

 departure from the observations, due east, and nearly horizontal. But the 

 backward point of intersection of the two nearly adjacent tracks is yet 

 about S.E., altitude 40°. As there appears no reason to assume a low 

 radiant-altitude, and a nearly horizontal motion of this slow-moving short- 

 pathed meteor through the air, from its observed appearance, it seems a 

 more correct procedure to comply with tlie evidently exact and careful 

 directions of the two recorded paths in fixing the radiant-point position at 

 their actual point of intersection. This is accordingly the point given as 

 a very well- determined radiant-point of the shooting-star in the present 

 reconstructed list. 



Nos. 35, 35a. — The real earthward course of the fine bolide of August 

 9th (a.m.), 1864, desciibed (on page 92 of the volume for that year of 

 these Reports) as concluded from the simultaneous iews of the meteor 

 obtained at the Luxembourg Observatory in Paris, and at Hawkhurst, 

 in Kent, must, it appears, be rejected and renounced as quite wrongly laid 

 down and represented. According to the note by M. Chapelas Coulvier- 

 Gravier of its appearance in Paris, given without doubt correctly (at p. 

 56) in the general catalogue of that year's Report, the meteor passed at 

 Paris from an altitude of eighteen degrees, ten degrees west of north to 

 the north point of the horizon. But the recorded real path proceeds from 

 the assumption that the meteor's course at Paris was from 10° east of 

 north towards the true north point. 



Small as the difierence is (shown in the accompanying figures, 1 and 

 2), between the supposed and really recorded appearances of the meteor's 

 path as seen in Paris, the effect upon the radiant-point, from the meteor's 

 position in the northern sky, at both the stations of the double observation 

 is prodigious. Instead of being between Perseus and Cassiopeia (E.N.E., 

 altitude 60°), as it was represented, the meteor's real radiant-point was 



FIC. 



io°j\r 



considerably south of the equator, in Aquarius or Capricornus, where the 

 two recorded apparent paths prolonged backwards, then intersect each 

 other in the sky. The whole account of the fireball's appearance itself 

 afibrds the strongest evidence of its being an ' Aquariad,' travelling, as 

 this comparison shows it to have been, with moderate speed, and with a 



