Rough Ways Made Smooth: A series of familiar essays on scientific subjectsProctor, Richard A. (Richard Anthony)
Science
Rough Ways Made Smooth: A series of familiar essays on scientific subjects
Proctor, Richard A. (Richard Anthony)
Science
belonging to the November system would suffice to show the possibility
that a whole flight of the November meteors might travel at a similar
distance behind the main body. It would be more easy, however, to
identify two such meteors than one, six than two, and a score than
half-a-dozen. The only way in which a meteor can be questioned, so to
speak, respecting the family it belongs to, is by noting its path
across the sky. If this path tends directly from the constellation
Leo (however remote Leo may be from the part of the heavens traversed
by the meteor), the chances are that the meteor is a Leonid, or one
of the November family. If the path tends from that particular part
of the constellation Leo (near the end of the curved blade of the
so-called Sickle in Leo), the probability of the meteor being a Leonid
is increased. If two or more meteors are seen to-morrow morning (after
12.30) which both tend from the Sickle in Leo, even though they seem to
tend in opposite directions, the chances are yet greater that they are
travelling in parallel paths along the track of the November meteors,
but some 2,000 million miles behind the main body. Should the number
mount up to a score or so, the conclusion would be, to all intents and
purposes, certain; and the possible occurrence of even a shower of
Leonids at a time midway between the customary _maxima_ of the meteoric
displays would be placed beyond question.
We must, however, admit that it seems less likely there will be
anything like a display of Leonids to-night than that patient observers
may be able to identify a few of these bodies, and thus--though by
observations of a less attractive kind--to advance our knowledge of
this interesting system. Far more likely is it that towards the end
of the month there will be a display of meteors belonging to another
and an entirely distinct family, a family scarcely less worthy to be
called November meteors _par excellence_, but actually rejoicing in the
classically unsatisfactory name of Andromeds.
_EXPECTED METEOR SHOWER._
(From the _Times_ of November 25, 1878.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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