The November Meteors. 375 



Catching meteors in a spectroscope is not an easy task. 

 It is a sort of celestial snap- shooting in which there are more 

 misses than hits. From the luminous glow which filled the 

 whole atmosphere, and which was heightened by the London 

 gas-lights, it was hopeless to spectroscopize trains, except at 

 their brightest. Out of a dozen or two I saw through the 

 instrument, the best defined spectra were yellow and green from 

 the trains, and with all the colours when the nucleus or ball was 

 in the field. My wife compared one she saw of a ball, to the 

 spectrum of Sirius, but brighter. 



I tried, ineffectually, to catch some of these shooting stars in 

 my six and a half inch telescope, but they evaded me. I put on 

 a large, low, eye-piece — an aplanatic of Home and Thornth wait e, 

 — which, with my instrument, gives a field of 4m. 15s, and 

 pointed it at stars near which meteors were flashing, but 

 although fresh supplies came in the expected direction, they 

 provokingly went a little too high or too low. 



The great majority of the meteors were as bright as first 

 magnitude stars, such as Vega and Sirius ; some as bright as 

 Jupiter ; others rivalled Venus, but few, if any, exceeded her. 

 One of the largest I saw shot horizontally in the 1ST. E, and 

 burst with airregular flame at (about) 2.38. A shower of sparks 

 came from one near 7 Leonis. 



At the height of the shower the meteors came in batches 

 and volleys. Sometimes two or more travelled close together, 

 and at others, sets of four or five flashed in diverging courses 

 from various parts of the heavens. 



Near two o' clock I marked the paths of a good many on 

 one of HerschePs British Association maps. Most of them 

 seemed to converge to a point between a and t Leonis, but 

 the courses of several that passed through Gemini and Canis 

 minor would, if continued straight backwards through their 

 points of first visibility, have converged in Leo minor. The 

 radiant point of the great majority was undoubtedly in Leo, 

 and we must wait for Mr. Rerschel to compare the various 

 observations, and give us an accurate estimation. 



The duration of the trains is probably underrated from their 

 tendency to be lost prematurely in the general luminosity of 

 the sky. Mr. J. Symons saw some for two minutes through 

 a two and a half inch telescope. We saw several flashes like 

 lightning, but whether they were really electrical discharges, 

 or the light of meteors bursting out of sight, I cannot tell. 



From the impossibility of two persons seeing and counting 

 all the meteors, the total number must be set down as con- 

 siderably in excess of our enumeration. We counted 1500 

 by about 3 a.m., and adding 100 or so seen earlier, this makes 

 1600 — a portion only of the entire display. If these bodies are 



