At this time of year, late November, watchers of the night sky are likely to see many more shooting stars than usual. This is because the Earth in its annual journey round the Sun cuts across the orbit of a stream meteors known to astronomers as the An-drainedes, since they seem to radiate from. a point in the great constellation of Andromeda. One of the conspicuous features of the heavens during last quarter of the year, being at the zenith and meridian, or directly overhead, at about 9 o'clock these nights. As a matter of fact Novem*oer is an extremely good month for observing shooting stars, for, not only do the Andromedes put in their appearance during this month, but also the Leonids, radiate ing from a point in the constellation of Leo, which. however, does not show in the sky just now till the latter part of the night.
They are at their best on or about November 12, and are preceded about a month earlier, on October 9, or thereabouts by the Draconids, radiating from tne constellation of Draco, the Dragon, which is then in the northwestern sky at about 9 o'clock in the evening. Thee. in turn, are preceded by the Perseids, coming from the constellation of Perseus. whose brightest star is Algol, and which may then be seen in the eastern sky at about 3 o'clock in the morning. There are other groups, or perhaps' they should be called streams, of identifiakle shooting stars which appear during spun The reason why I have brought this subject up is because on the evening of November 22, a week ago, my wife and I while out on the terrace of our garden admiring the wonderful sight of the brilliant planet Venus in conjunction with the thin crescent of the Moon at exactly 5.35 o'clock, were treated to the most glorious heavenly spectacle either of us had ever seen. This was a magnificent Shooting star of unusual size and extraordinary brilliance, for out-shining Venus in luminosity and almost rivalling the Moon itself, which suddenly appeared in the eastern sky streaking in a westerly direction and leaving behind it a long bright trail like a pennant.
Tt was in the form of a large globular glowing mass that scintillated like a star, its fail extending over a distance of about a tenth of that from horizon to horizon. It was some distance south of zenith, and, when it bad about reached the meridian, it broke in two, each half assuming the same globular form as the original whole, and one following directly behind the other about a couple of Moon's diameters away. As they proceeded westward the hinder ball of incandescent white light vanished, but the other continued, finally disappearing at a point a few degrees above the horizon a little south of west.
The whole display did not last more than a couple of seconds or so, but left us gasping at the wonder of it. When first noticed, this magnificent shooting star was somewhat to the south of the constellation Taurus, about where the great red star Betelgueuse in the constellation of Orion would be a few hours later. It passed just below Venus and the Moon, but vanished somewhat to the north of the point where the constellation Sagittarius was just setting, from which fact and its short duration and extreme apparent size and brilliance I assume that it was at a comparatively low actual altitude, while, from the fact that neither my wife nor I were conscious of hearing any of the explosive or rumbling sounds that usually accompany really large shooting stars, I assume that it was not actually of any great size.
I remember some years ago seeing almost directly overhead and travelling from west another very bright shooting star.
lasted several tints the duration of this one. It left behind it a luminous. trail, which continued for about twenty minutes, gradually drifting northward and changing from a perfectly straight band into a wavy are before it faded out. Taking into account ihe speed with which these heavenly bodies travel, the long duration of this particular shooting star indicates that it must have been at a very great altitude.
Preferring to die of anything rather than curiosity, I naturally began to wonder to just which, if any, of the well-known streams of shooting stars the one my wife and I had the extraordinary good fortune to -see on November 22 belonged. I looked the matter up in my books on astronomy and, of course, found that its appearance coincided with the period when the Andromedes have usually been recorded, but, from the fact that it did not emanate from the direction of the constellation Andromeda, being much too far south, it must be assumed that it was not an Andromede, but one of the countless meteors that wander through space independently of any system such as that of our Sun with its planets, comets and meteoric streams.
This naturally leads to the questions as to just what shooting stars are and what place they occupy in the mighty aggregation of entities in the universe, of which our ances-fors vainly imagined our Earth and its inhabitants to be the centre.
Shooting stars, or meteors, as they are called in astronomy, may be described as irregularly shaped lumps of rock, very often partly or even entirely metallic in composition, travelling through space at a very high speed. They may be of considerable size, perhaps even miles in diameter, ranging down io little more than pebbles a few ounces or less in weight. They do not become visible to us until they com" into contact with the atmosphere that envelopes our Earth. when they become strongly luminous, either because they have become incandescent while passing through the highly electrified. upper regions of our atmosphere, a recent theory, or because they catch fire, so to speak, as a result. of the terrific heag engendered by the friction caused by their enormous speed as they pass through the rarefied air at high altitudes. In outer space they are nothing but dead cold matter, quite invisible to us but, from the numbers that are seen as they flash through our atmosphere every night, it is believed that there are uncountable billions of them wandering through space altogether apart from those belonging to the streams which appear in showers at regular intervals and have been named by astronomers.
These streams of meteors, however, are far more interesting to us than the wanderers, for it has been discovered that they belong to our solar system, being, in fact, all that is left of disintegrated comets. How this was discovered is one of the most remarkable achievements of modern astronomy. It was found out by watching for comets. The comet named after the German astronomer Wilhelm von Biela appeared every 6% years. In 1846 watchers for it were to note that it had split in two. like the. shooting star already described. In 1852 it again appeared on schedule, but the two halves were then calculated to be over a million miles
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.