[Image: The Meteor of 1860, by Frederic Edwin Church]
This summer marks the 150th anniversary of a remarkable celestial event: an Earth-grazing meteor procession of interest not just to the scientific world, but to the literary one as well. It wasn’t just notable: it was flat-out forgotten until recently.
First, some definitions:
- An Earth-grazing meteor is one which enters the Earth’s atmosphere at a shallow angle, and exits the atmosphere a few moments later without actually striking the ground. Of course, during those brief few seconds or minutes, it flares up just like any other fast-moving object from the heavens.
- The term meteor procession refers to a phenomenon in which an Earth-grazing meteor hits the atmosphere and bursts into fragments, which then become multiple smaller meteors traveling in parallel with one another.
These events are exceedingly rare, countable on the fingers of one hand if you go back several centuries. In fact, the 1860 occurrence had been utterly forgotten until about ten years ago — even though (from all contemporary reports) it was one of the more spectacular. Its very, um, forgottenness created a problem for literary scholars with an OCD bent. To wit: what was Walt Whitman nattering on about in poem #100 of Leaves of Grass, entitled “Year of Meteors, 1859-’60“?
Here’s the relevant passage:
…the comet that came unannounced out of the north,
flaring in heaven;
Nor the strange huge meteor procession, dazzling and clear,
shooting over our heads,
(A moment, a moment long, it sail’d its balls of unearthly light
over our heads,
Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;)
In the upcoming July issue of Sky & Telescope magazine, a physicist (a “forensic astronomer”) explains how he made the connection (thanks to the painting featured at the top of this post) — and “discovered” the 1860 procession. If you don’t want to wait for that issue, you can read about the whole matter here (in an interview at the New Scientist site) and here (Texas State University news service).
I just love stuff like this.
DarcKnyt says
That sounds so COOL. I’d love to see something like that in my lifetime. Heck, I even managed to miss Haley’s when it came through.
John says
Darc: Me, too! (Re: Halley’s, I mean.) Likewise, Kohoutek didn’t live up to expectations and — unless you belonged to or were somehow involved with Heaven’s Gate — ditto for Hale-Bopp.
There’s some statistic batted around by UFOlogists to support the notion that, well, there could be a lot of stuff going on up there. It’s something like, “We only look up at the sky for 5% of our lives.” (Can’t remember what the percentage actually is, let alone how they calculate it.) So I wonder sometimes about all the sudden-but-momentary phenomena we might be missing, especially given that we’d miss a lot anyway just because of daylight. Hubble and other astro-photographs include a lot of gas clouds, for instance, which are leftovers of supernovae, probably thousands of years ago. I wonder for how long — if at all — the supernovae themselves were visible from Earth. Is it like a “blink and you’ll miss it” deal? Don’t know. Wish I did though!
cynth says
One of the things I always wanted to witness is the meteor showers in August (the Perseids). For some reason, whenever I’m made aware of its impending date, something has come up and I can’t take the time to stop and look. But I will someday, as God is my witness (she says shaking her fist at the sky). Maybe this year…