To the Editor of the Nozra-Cuma Dany News.
Kindly allow me, dear Sir, to come and correct a scientific error that crept yesterday into the columns of your valuable paper. This very fact gives nie an opportunity of entertaining your readers with a fow remarks, in which not a particle of commercial or political matter is to picked up: and yet, though pure science, astronomy only, is to be spoken of in this letter, it will not be deprived, I hope, of all interest.
At this period of the year, the night comes quick enough to have allowed a large number of the residents at Shanghai to contemplate, the night before last, what i Ty called @ shower of me what exaggerated in the present has not been the same, as it wil other occasions, stars? Some my: f small dark bodies, circulating, like the earth, around the suv, in orbits making angles with our own orbit, in which they are disseminated, During its yearly course, the earth may cross these travellers, and thou their exceedingly transit through our atmosphere to set them on fire and make them visible for a moment.
Some of th night before last: this was alo the case with the well known appearances of the 10th of August, the Perscids, and 14th of November, the Lec You see I make a difference between the Leonids and the shower of the 27th of November. This is the error I take the liberty of correcting in your columns of yesterday.
Comets are supposed to be heaps of meteors derived from nebulous masses, to our planetary aystem. Atirac:
exercised on them by some of the planets may at ongth parcel thei out and scatter their fragmenta all along their orbit This seems to have taken place in the case of the great comet of 1862: at least, this is the origin attributed to the rich " swarm a every six wen years from 1772 to 1846.
On ber, broke into two pieces, comets of the same ap; deviating rapidly from each other.
By the 10th of February the two bodies of the comets were already distant by 150,000 miles; however they seemed to take leave of one another reluctantly, and for many days a sort of bridge was seen between the two.
On the 26th Septamber 1852 the twin meteors appeared, but divided by an interval of 1,620,000 miles. Since then, all researches have been useless to find them again: they ought to have come back and boon seen from the earth in 1859, 1866, 1872, 1879, but the comet Biela did not certainly return. Was it lost for ever tous? Had it missed its way in the neighbourhood of the large planets? No, it was impossible, for on its way it could meet neither with Jupiter, nor with any other of the further planets, Now, when it was no more thought of, on the evening of the 27th November, 1872, a true "shower of shooting ators" was soon falling fromthe sky: it was like actual fireworks, and lasted.frow'7 p.m.-to 1.a.m. of the following day. at Rome, numbered 13,892 meteors at Moncalieri 33,4005 in England one observer alone saw 10,579 of them; on the hole their number was estimated 160,000, they burst in all directions from the same spot of the sky, near the fine afar Gamma d'Audromdde. This in oxectly the same point that we found at Zi-ka-wei for the shooting stars soon the night before Inst, 'Now, as the' orbit. of the famous comet Biela, broken in 1846, and lost aluco 152, meets the orbit of the earth pre cisely on the 27th of November, since 1872 the same phenomenon has been renewed with the same interest on the th of November 1879 and 1885. The ibolium" (or nearest approach to the sun) of the comet Biela might take according to the calculations, in bril 1886, Every year the earth crosses the orbit of the comet, or more exactly the orbit of the "warm" to which it has given birth, always at the same date, the 27th of November, and consequently every year shooting' afara must make their appearance; but it is easy to understand that the "swarm" must have a far greater dévsity in the very spot before was the body of the parcelled his spot at present is not far from orth, for it ought to go round the ann after a few mouths only. Thence results a groater abundance of meteors during the night in which we have travelled through the orbit, This transit, or this passage, is generally avery short one: all is over after a fow hours. In 1872 the meteorical ' shower lasted six hours only. The apparition of the Leonids takes place only in the morning of the 14th November; that of the Perseids last a fow days, with a maximum on the 10th August, and this duration evidently depends on the depth warm" we meet with. The depth comet's " swarm" ought jerablo according to the 100 of 187: this year: for November) no meteor was to the night before last so many shooting stars took fire in the sky. a Ziicawei Observatory, 29th November, 1885.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.