The Lyrid Meteors

Abstract

UNLIKE the August Perseids, the Lyrid meteor-stream, like those of the Quadrantids, Orionids and Geminids in January, October and December, seldom exhibits an abundant shooting-star display, more nearly resembling in that respect the Leonid and Bielid meteor-systems than the stream of August Perseids, its materials appearing to be still collected in one or more dense clusters in its orbit. Its brightest as well as its ordinary apparitions are also, like those of the Leonids, of remarkably short duration, so as to be very liable to escape observation unless splendid enough to arrest attention at some observing station on the globe. The great shower seen in America on the morning of April 20, 1803, only lasted in full splendour for two hours, from 1h. to 3h. a.m.; and a rather sensational abundance of the Lyrids on the morning of April 21, 1863, was entirely confined to the night of April 20, when 11 meteors, chiefly Lyrids, were seen at Hawkhurst in 45m., and 7 bright and several smaller ones were observed in 30m. at Weston-super-mare, between 11h. and 12h., and in a quarter of an hour after 15h., at Hawkhurst, 11 shooting-star tracks were noted, the meteors falling too rapidly then in all directions to be all recorded; the radiant point obtained from that night's tracks, and from a few Lyrids mapped on April 19 (23 Lyrid paths together, some of which may perhaps realty have diverged from other centres), was at 227½° + 34½°, close to the position which was first obtained of it “near α Lyrae,” by Prof. E. C. Herrick, in America, 24 years earlier, on the morning of April 19, 1839. On the preceding night, of April 19, the hourly rate of meteors from 10h. to 11h. was only ordinary, and on the night of April 22, not a single meteor was seen in an hour by either of two observers who watched the clear sky simultaneously from 11h. 15m. to 12h. 15m. in London and at Hawkhurst for hoped-for accordances.