The Great Meteoric Shower

Abstract

DURING the recent star-shower, my attention was given especially to observations connected with the flight of individual meteors. As on many previous occasions in the presence of rare natural phenomena, I was keenly mortified with the deficiency of my own scientific training; but I send a few gleanings, if perchance a useful grain can be found amongst them. The brightness obviously increased with the distance traversed, but in many cases no increase of brightness was perceptible for the first third of the course. The extinction was not instantaneous but only very rapid, the distance traversed towards extinction being perceptible though very small; perhaps because the velocity seemed to diminish as the brightness increased. The train in many instances was forked, being brightest on its edges, the luminosity of which lasted for some time after the intermediate space was dark. This seems incompatible with the hypothesis that the train is a mere optical result, or that the brightness of the train arises, as in lightning, from incandescent particles of the atmosphere. In one or two instances the brightness of the train was granular, resembling the light of a partially resolved nebula, or of the Galaxy. In a few instances the paths of the meteors appeared to show remarkable deflections. One, notably, at 6h. 25m., close to Vega, resembled an “S” drawn out nearly straight.