METEOR SHOWER

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 258, 29 July 1939, Page 12

METEOR SHOWER

Predicted To Fall Next Thursday ASTRONOMERS ON THE LOOKOUT World To Traverse Tail Of Comet .Astronomers expect a shower of meteors to fall next Thursday. That night the world, in its career through space, will rush close across the tail of a comet. It is likely that star-dust trailing in the wake of the comet will hurtle into the earth’s atmosphere and break into a rain of falling stars. 'l’hc comet is known as Jurlof-Achmanarof-Hasscl. Twice in the next six months its course will nearly intersect that of the earth: next week and at the end of January. On each occasion a shower of meteors is likely to occur.

New Zealand astronomers are looking forward eagerly to the occasion. “Though we cannot be certain yet that any meteors will actually appear, all amateur astronomers should be on the qui vive, in case a really spectacular meteor shower should occur," writes Mr. R. A. Mclntosh, Auckland, director of the meteor section of the New Zealand Astronomical Society, in its official publication. Mr. M. Geddes, of the Carter Observatory, Wellington, also remarks that the possibility of’ a meteor shower that night is of particular interest to New Zealand observers. The Shower of 1833. Many times in the world's history such showers have occurred. Probably the most famous was in 1533, wdien tlie night sky above the whole of North America was ablaze with shooting stars from midnight till dawn. From one place, it was computed, more than 200.000 meteors of unusual brilliance were seen to trail their 'fiery skirts across the heavens. Just 100 years after, in 1933, Europe was lit up by another such display of natural fireworks. Portuguese peasants fled to the churches, thinking that the sky was coming crashing about their ears.

In neither of these cases was a single meteor recorded as having reached the earth. The heat of their passage through the outer atmosphere consumed them long before they could penetrate to the earth’s surface. For most shooting stars are believed to be no bigger than a hazel nut, and they arc usually 50 or 60 miles distant over'head.l Fireballs Over Canada. This is not always so. In 1913 a number of great fireballs roared over Canada and the Atlantic, at a height of about 35 miles and a tremendous velocity. The thunder of their passing shook the houses, and their light increased constantly as they neared the earth. Observers recorded their passage across nearly 6000 miles of countryside. They were believed to have plunged into the sea. In 1923 a small stone , weighing about 31b. came whizzing out of the sky in broad daylight, and buried itself a yard or two from where a startled Essex yokel was at work. Longer ago, in 1795. a boulder weighing half a hundredweight buried itself in the ground 30 feet from a Yorkshire labourer. In 1866 a thousand meteors fell in a shower ou Czechoslovakia. The biggest weighed about six hundredweight, and buried itself lift, into the ground. In 1847 three children sleeping in a cottage in Bohemia were awakened by a meteor crashing through the roof and covering their bed with the debris of its passage. A similar event occurred in Scotland in 1917, when four projectiles hurtled out of the ether, and one of them shattered a house in the Strathmore district. Fall of 100,000 Meteors.

Two of the biggest showers recorded were of 14,000 projectiles, which fell in Arizona in 1912, and some 100.000 in Poland in IS6S. Believed to have been made by the biggest meteor ever to strike the earth is a crater three-quarters of a mile across and 500 feet deep, walled by high cliffs. So far, however, the actual meteorite has not been located. A thousand square miles of forest, in Siberia was blasted by a shower of giant meteors in the early years of this century. They flamed over northern Russia, scorched the forest with the heat of tiieir fiery gases, and tore down trees over a wide area with the wind and shock of their impact. They drove craters 10 to 15 yards wide, and 10 to 12 feet deep. They weighed about 130 toti,s each, and literally shook the world with their arrival. In July, 1933, a woman and two children were burnt to death in Bestincon, France, when a meteor struck tiieir home. In 1934, the New YorkSan Francisco mail plane flew into a shower of meteors at a height of 7000 feet; they detonated like shrapnel, and she narrowly escaped being damaged. Recent New Zealand Meteors.

Two notable instances are recorded of meteors landing in New Zealand in recent years. In October, 1928, the; Godley Head lighthouse-keeper and his family were terrified by a meteor which roared past witbin a stone’s throw of Hie lighthouse station. Trailing flame and dense white smoke, and making a noise louder than thunder, it plunged sizzling into the ocean, leaving one of the children insensible, with fright.

Only last April, riflemen attending a meeting at Trentlium were astonished to see, in brilliant sunshine, a whitehot meteor flash across between them and the butts, and vanish somewhere behind the prison. The materials of meteors are in the main iron, nickel, and rock. Whirling through the empty places between the worlds, they generate neither heat nor light till they enter the atmosphere of the earth and kindle with the friction of their speed. In flight they are called meteors, but those that penetrate as far as Hie earth are known thereafter as meteorites. The two terms are sometimes confused. Tlie time-honoured theory that falling stars denote souls coming to earth to newborn children, and that rising meteors denote deaths, being departing souks winging heavenward Is discounted by astronomers. They maintain that Hie apparent angle of flight is due entirely to tlip quarter of the sky in which the meteor is observed, and the direction of its passage through space at the moment when it came into the earth’s atmosphere. They are able io account for its movements by mathematics, and are thus able to compute with fair accuracy the times when the earth is likely to pass through such belts of particulcs as are known to cross her course from time to time.