METEOR MYSTERY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17952, 2 December 1932, Page 5

METEOR MYSTERY

HOAXED BY LEONIDS DUE IN 1933 ADELAIDE, Nov. 23. The big meteor mystery has been solved. The famous Leonid shower has hoaxed the world, for it is riot due until November, 1933. The Government Astronomer, Mr. G. F. Dodwell, announced this revelation to-day. Astronomers who expected to see tho brilliant sky spectacle on November. 16 and 17 apparently were "astray in their reckoning, so all the elaborate preparations to record the long-awaited Leonid display, all hours of lost sleep, and all tho stiff necks, were in vain. Scientists, and thousands who watched with them through the chilly _ nighthours, might as well have been in bed. Since the failure of tho Leonid shower Mr. Dodwell has spent hours of research to discover the reason, and calculations forced him to the conclusion that 1933, not 1932, would lie the normal year for the appearance of tho Leonids in all their glory. True, Mr. Dodwell saw 10 Leonids streak across the sky during the early morning of November 16, and another three oh the following morning, but, by no stretch of imagination could either of the appearances bo termed a shower. Ho says ho believes now that the Leonids ho and other observers saw were some of the innumerable stragglers scattered round the orbit of tho swarm, which is met by the earth every November. It is only when the earth encounters the main body of Leonids that the real fireworks display is seen. Mr. Dodwell said that although the period of tho Leonid shower is on an average 33J years, it is not an absolutely regular period, as it is subject to oscillations, which have caused the meteors to appear sometimes one or even two years earlier or later,