A little ramble through 19th century astronomy - more on the Andromedid meteor shower of 1872

 Nature December 19^th 1872

The Late Meteoric Shower

We have had here, and I presume you also have had in England, quite a fine display of shooting stars from the fragments of Biela’s comet.

On Sunday evening November 24^th, they were coming about as fast as in the thickest parts of the August sprinkles – that is forty or fifty to the hour, for a single observer. Three fourths of them radiate from gamma Andromeda and vicinity.

On Monday morning there was no special abundance, but the radiant was then quite low in the north west.

Monday evening, they were coming with about half the frequency of the previous evening. Half of those seen came from the Andromeda radiant.

Tuesday evening the sky was overcast, but Wednesday evening was so great a display as to attract the attention of multitudes. Our party of from two to six persons counted 1,000 in a part of the first hour – that is from 6h 38m to 7h 34m, and in the next hour and a quarter we counted 750. The display was rapidly diminishing. Before midnight it was essentially over, and so far as know, has not re appeared.

The flights were slower than those of the November 14^th period, and generally faint. The radiant was carefully observed on Wednesday evening by Prof Twining and myself, and we argued that the centre was in the line from the Pleiades to gamma Andromeda produced, and was about 3 degrees beyond that star. It was much longer in right ascension than in declination, and was not less than 8 degrees long. The star gamma Andromeda was the radiant area, for flights in the several directions from the radiant would, if produced backwards, pass sometimes on one side and sometimes the other of that star.

The character of this display, and the previously observed division of the comet into two parts , will I doubt not,, incline astronomers to the opinion of Dr Weiss and others, who think that the shooting stars are products of the disintegration of comets already moving in closed orbits, rather than the opinion of Prof Schiaparelli that they are drawn from the stellar spaces into long parabolic currents. The latter hypothesis presents difficulties which I cannot explain.

 

H A Newton

Yale College

December 2^nd

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