144 Schroter's Meteors, 



SCHROTER'S METEORS.— THE LUNAR CASSINL— 

 CRIMSON STAR.— OOCULTATION. 



BY THE EEV. T. W. WEBB, A.M., F.R.A.S. 



The examination, in our last number, of Schroter's remarks on 

 Light- spots on the dark side of the moon, naturally leads to a 

 curious observation by the same astronomer, of a very unusual 

 meteoric appearance, with which he closes his chapter on the 

 subject. He tells us that on Oct. 15, 1789, about 5h. 10m. or 

 15m. a.m., as he was examining the dark side of the moon, then 

 more than 25° high, with a power of 161 in his 7 ft. reflector, 

 and had Plato and the Mare Imbrium, but no portion of the 

 illuminated hemisphere, in the field ; — there and then, in front 

 of the dark globe, and as far as his surprise would allow him 

 to judge, in the centre at once of the M. Imbrium and the field 

 of view, broke out in an instant a stream of light, consisting of 

 many separate little sparks, white and brilliant as the en- 

 lightened part of the moon. They took a straight course to the 

 N., away in front of the N. part of the M. Imbrium, the nearest 

 limb of the moon, and the small vacant remainder of the field. 

 As this stream had completed half its course, another, exactly 

 similar to it in every respect, broke out nearly in the same place 

 where the first appeared, but a little further E., which moved in 

 a line parallel to its predecessor and passed away in the same 

 direction out of sight. He has given .a diagram, of which a 



reduced copy is inserted here, where A. is the 1st, B the 2nd 

 stream, which broke out in B when A had reached C. a b being 

 the border of the M. Imbrium, c d the limb, ef the edge of the 

 field. 



Startling as was the impression which this distant scene 

 made upon our observer, he soon recovered from it, and re- 

 peatedly renewed to himself a lively idea of what he had 

 witnessed in order to compute the time of its duration, when he 

 found that the visible course of each stream had lasted about 



