The Life of a Shooting Star.

Evening Post, Volume LV, Issue 101, 30 April 1898, Page 2 (Supplement)

The Life of a Shooting Star.

Asmallhody, perhaps as large as a pavingstone, or larger, but moro often not as large as a marble, is moving round the sun. Jußt an a mighty planet revolves in an ellipse, so this small object will move round and round in an ellipse with the sun in the focus. There are at the present moment inconceivable myriads of imch meteors moving in this manner. They are too small and too distant for our telescopes, and we can never see them except under extraordinary circumstances. When we see the meteor it is usually moving with enormous velooity, so that it often traverses a distance of more than twenty miles in a second of time. Such a velocity is almost impossible near the earth's surface; the remittance of air would prevent it. It may havo been moving round and round the sun for thousands perhaps for millions of years, without hindrance; but the supreme moment arrives, and the meteor perishes in a streak of splendour. In the course of its wanderings the body perhaps comes near the earth, and within a few hundred miles of its surface of course begins to encounter the upper fringe of the atmosphere with which the earth is enclosed. To a body moving with the appalling 1 velocity of a meteor, a plunge in the atmosphere is usually fatal. Even though the upper In y era of air are excessively attenuated, yet they suddenly cheek the velocity, almost n* a liflo bullet would be checked when fiivd into water. Asa raetor rushes through th« atmosphere the friction of the air iv aniifl its hiirface ; gradually it becomes nd-liot, then white-hot, and is finally nii.oa uIF into the vapour with a brilliant li^'l.t, while we on the earth, one or two ]i luidrod miles below, exclaim : 'Oh, lookl there is a shooting atar,'