[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.
