METEOR MYSTERY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 7, 6 December 1932, Page 4

METEOR MYSTERY.

HOAXED BY LEONIDS. ’flie big meteor mystery lias been solved (says an Adelaide message). The famous Leonid shower has hoaxed the world, for it is not due until November, 1933. The Government Astronomer, Mr G. E. Dodwell, announced ithis revelation. ! Astronomers who expected to see the brilliant sky spectacle on November 16 and 17 apparently were astray in their reckoning, so all tho elaborate preparations to record the long-awaited Leonid display, all hours of lost sleep, and all the stiff necks, were in vain. Scientists, and thousands who watchled with them through the chilly niglitihours. might as well have been in lied. I Since the failure of tho Leonid I shower Mr Dodwell has spent hours of research to discover the reason, and calculations forced him to the eonjeliision that 1933. not 1932. would he the nornyil year for the appearance of ; the Leonids in all their glory, j True, Mr Dodwell saw 10 Leonids streak across tho sky during the early I morning of November 16. and another three on the following morning, but ihv no stretch of imagination could ieither of the appearances be termed a | shower. i He says lie believes now that (he Leonids he and other observers saw were some of the innumerable stragglers scattered round the orbit of tho j swarm, which is met by the earth [every November. It is only when tho earth encounters [the main body of Leonids that the real I fireworks display is seen. Mr Dodwell said that although the period of the Leonid shower is on an average 331 years, it is not an absolutelv regular period, as it is subject to oscillations, which have caused the meteors to appear sometimes olio or even two years earlier or later.