304 report — 1878. 



the two observers' lines of sight of the meteor's point of disappearance is 

 just 9CP, or half of the visible span of the heavens, proceeding from a 

 distance between the two observers' stations of only 35 miles. The 

 meteor vanished accordingly at a height of only 14 miles above a point of 

 the earth's surface, about three miles west of Coventry. The observations 

 suffice also to determine completely the length and real position of the 

 whole of the meteor's visible path, or line of flight, before reaching this 

 point of explosion and of final disappearance. A complete view of the 

 track was seen and mapped at Birmingham, extending to a length of 17°, 

 which was traversed by the fireball in five or six seconds, so slowly, that it 

 must certainly have been seen very much foreshortened, and have first 

 come into view there very near its radiant point. Only the terminal 

 part of the flight was observed at Leicester, but its direction prolonged 

 backwards meets that of the Birmingham apparent path similarly pro- 

 duced, about 3° before the point of first appearance there, at a common 

 radiant point of the two apparent courses in R.A. 177°, decl. + 46°, near 

 X Ursse majoris. In April, 1872, several remarkably bright meteors were 

 seen proceeding from radiant points in Ursa major (see these Reports, 

 Vol. for 1872, pp. 104, 11G), and the peculiar brightness of meteors 

 belonging to a group of April showers with radiant points in that con- 

 stellation was noticed by Mr. J. E. Clark (' Nature/ May 2nd, 1872) ; 

 one of them was doubly observed at York, and at Hawkhurst on the 

 night of the 19th of April, 1872, and its radiant point from the combined 

 projection of the recorded paths was like that of the present fireball, 

 close to x Ursae majoris. Heis' April-period radiant M8 (at 155° + 47°), 

 with Schiaparelli's Nos. 52 and 56 at 163° + 47°, and 168° + 47° for 

 April 10 and 14, together form a general region of divergence at the 

 average place 162° + 47°, which is the last of three centres of the 

 April ' Ursids ' in Mr. Greg's general list of 1876 (Nos. 21 or 46, 

 45, and 56), and that to which attention was drawn by Mr. Clark, in his 

 letter in ' Nature,' above noticed, as producing meteors of peculiar bright- 

 ness. It is, however, the first of them, and especially Heis' radiant M7, 

 April 1-15, at 180° + 49°, included in it, which agrees most nearly with 

 the real direction of the present fireball's course. 



With the real radiant point and point of disappearance of the fireball 

 as thus established, and with its apparent place of commencement as seen 

 at Birmingham, the beginning of its visible path is found to be at a 

 height of 80 miles over the town of Beckingham, near Market Har- 

 borough. The length of its real course was 75 miles, descending steeply 

 from an altitude of 58°, 4° N. of.E., which was the direction of its 

 radiant point ; its time of flight was reckoned at Birmingham as about five 

 or six seconds, giving, with the observed length of its course, a velocity of 

 about 13^ miles per second as the fireball's real speed of flight. This is 

 exactly the theoretical speed which corresponds, with the observed radiant 

 point, to a parabolic form of the fireball's real orbit round the sun ; this 

 concluding result of the combined projections gives fresh assurance to the 

 supposition that the fireball was really an unusually splendid and par- 

 ticularly brilliant member of an ordinary meteor shower. 



At Birmingham the meteor's light was like that of the full moon 

 overhead, attracting the observer's attention to its falling globe of bluish 

 flame, and it burst into red fragments at disappearance. At a place not 

 named (but apparently near Nottingham or Leicester), in the ' Times ' of 

 April 4th, 1878, where a rather more distant view of its appearance 



