The Great Star Shower in Europe.
By William B. Herron
[The following article, the advance proof sheet of which was sent us by W. B. Herron, Editor of Young Pilgrim, Boston Mass., would have appeared in our last issue, but for want of room.—Ed.] The foreign mails received on the 27th ultimo, by the Steamer Scotia, brought full accounts of the great star shower observed in Europe on the night and morning of the 13th and 14th of Nov. last. This display was seen in all parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, in France and Spain, and perhaps all over the continent; and though not so grand in Great Britain as those of 1779 and 1833 in America, it was yet very magnificent, and never to be forgotten by those who were so fortunate as to witness it. The extracts which we condense below, from the extended accounts in the foreign journals, confirm the previously published predictions on this subject, so far as Europe is concerned, and establish beyond a doubt the periodicity of the November star showers; and they add another convincing evidence to the already numerous signs of the approaching end. THE STAR SHOWER IN ENGLAND.
The following account of this grand meteoric display as seen in London, is from the London Times of Nov. 15th:— “The fiery-shower, foretold by the science of America and Europe, for the night of the 13th–14th of November in this year, was seen in full splendor yesterday morning between the hours of 12 and 2. From about 11 o’clock occasional meteors might be seen gliding along the sky from east to west, but these were only the avant couriers of the great legion that followed at a later hour. The numbers increased after twelve o’clock with great rapidity. “As the constellation Leo rose over the houses north of Paddington Green, and moved some points to the south, first one meteor than another shot across the sky in various regions and with various directions, but plainly from the one quarter. The spectator had soon counted half-a-dozen; then he felt sure he had seen thirty; then six or seven in a minute; then there came two or three together; then not less than a dozen of all kinds. Then they appeared faster than he could count them. Some shot across the heavens, leaving long, bright, and lingering trains, the star itself seeming to explode and instantly disappear. Some darted as quickly and as bright, but without trains. Some struck the sight, like sparks from a forge, everywhere at once. Some seemed to fall over trees or houses, bright to the last, but with the ruddy hues of a lower atmosphere. “Look where we would, it was the same; in the far west, and throughout the entire north, there was either the bright glancing speck of light, or the long train, or what seemed an actual ball of light, that illuminated the country, and was slow to die away. As the night advanced, these meteors chased one another across the sky, following in one another’s track, or running side by side. The heavens seemed alive with this unwonted host. There were times when it seemed as if a mighty wind had caught the old stars, loosed them from their holdings, and swept them across the firmament. . . . It was a spectacle which cannot be imagined or forgotten. Few who saw it had ever seen the like, and few could expect ever to see it again.” The London Morning Post of the same date says: “Half London was awake till a late hour on Tuesday night for the purpose of viewing the shower of stars or meteors which the astronomers had predicted, and those who had sacrificed a few hours of sleep were amply repaid, for the atmosphere was unusually clear, and thus the grand phenomenon was seen under the most favorable circumstances. The wondrous sight began soon after midnight, and from that period until after five o’clock, it was witnessed with but few intervals of time. . . . So near did some of the meteors appear, that their resemblance to rockets occurred to every one, and we almost seemed to listen for the rush through the air. During the transit of the meteors, the light of the other stars was scarcely to be noticed. The effect produced during the simultaneous passage of meteors in the various parts of the heavens was inexpressibly impressive. The noiseless course gave a thrill that no artificial splendors could ever produce.” In Liverpool the showers were frequent, and on a scale of much magnificence. Says the Liverpool correspondent of the London News: “Some of the meteors illuminated the whole sky with a glare like that of the aurora borealis in its grandest phases. Some were like balls of light. Others expanded from a small nucleus to a large volume of light, which darted across the heavens with the speed of thought, and were then lost in the obscurity of the west. Some of the meteors had all the appearance of sky rockets, shedding as they pursued their course, trails of fire.” A correspondent of the London Times gives the following description of their appearance in Dover: “About ten o’clock, many single aerolites were seen darting from the horizon to the eastward, then continued, without much variation as far as regards number, until a little after midnight, when they increased in size, brilliancy, and velocity, until the maximum was reached about one o’clock. The sight then was exceedingly startling; hundreds of blazing meteors darting at the same moment from a point in the heavens in the constellation Leo, which was the great center whence they started in all directions.” The meteors, it will be seen, proceeded, in this star shower, from the same point in the heavens as in that of 1833,—the constellation Leo, near the star gamma Leonis. From this point, at times, they shot up into the sky as from a fountain of never failing stars, dropping to the north and to the south, or exploding like rockets or like sparks of molten iron under the blows of a blacksmith’s hammer, and flying across the firmament in all directions. Such was their appearance in Leicester, and in other places. The Edinburgh Scotsman of November 15th says: “Standing on Carlton Hill, and looking westward, with the observatory shutting out the lights of Princes street, it was easy for the eye to delude the imagination into fancying some distant enemy bombarding Edinburgh Castle from long range; and the occasional cessation of the shower for a few seconds, only to break out again with more numerous and more brilliant drops of fire, served to countenance this fancy.” From the statement of Professor Grant, of the Glasgow Observatory, as published in the Glasgow Herald, we take the following: “Shortly after one o’clock we had the good fortune to obtain a magnificent and uninterrupted view of the phenomenon. At 1h. 15m. the heavens had assumed an extremely imposing aspect. Multitudes of beautiful meteors were now everywhere visible, but especially in the eastern regions of the heavens, where the constellation Leo was to be seen as he gradually ascended in his course toward the meridian. Hundreds of the meteors far surpassed in brilliancy the stars of the first magnitude. In multitudes of instances they were brighter than Jupiter, and some of them even equalled Venus when she is at her greatest brilliancy. Their prevailing color was white, but some had a yellowish tinge of light, while others had a bluish tinge. In every instance they were accompanied by a straight, narrow train of well-defined light of a beautiful emerald green color. “At 1h. 18m. a whole group of brilliant meteors were seen to burst out and diverge like a fan from the radiant point in Leo. At 1h. 20m. I counted the number of meteors visible in one minute, and I found them to amount to fifty-seven; but this in all probability did not exceed one-third of the number really visible in every part of the heavens. “At 1h. 42m. the most remarkable meteoric phenomenon presented itself to us in the constellation Ursa Major, but unfortunately none of us caught the commencement of it. The blaze of light which this meteor emitted at the time of vanishing, was extraordinary. It left behind it a curved residue of faint light, having the form of a horseshoe. As it gradually grew fainter, it expanded its dimensions, until it vanished. This singular phenomenon continued visible in the heavens for twenty minutes after it first attracted our attention.” A Dublin correspondent of the London Morning Post writes, (Nov. 14:) “The showers of meteors or shooting stars made their appearance at a little before twelve, midnight, and from that hour until about quarter after one A. M. the dark sky was illuminated by countless numbers of those luminous bodies, darting almost unintermittingly from east to west. Some of them were of most dazzling brilliancy, and left behind them a long trail of light, which was visible for some minutes after the head or nucleus had vanished. Many of them were seen to explode in the air, and some persons assert that on these occasions a faint sulphurous odor was perceptible.” An observer at Saragossa, in a letter to the London Times, says: “My attention was first directed to the falling stars at about twelve o’clock at night, by observing groups of people in the narrow streets of Saragossa, conversing together with a certain degree of excitement, Mira Usted es como si fue en el tiempo del sitio. (Look, it is just as if it were in the time of the siege,) was the reply to my question as to what was the matter, and on looking up, the appearance certainly was as if the city was being shelled. Showers of meteors seemed to be pouring into the place, a score or more at a time, exploding with a brilliant flame at different points, and leaving long luminous trains behind them, some of which lasted as streaks in the sky several instants after the explosion of the meteors. “The meteors seemed to be most abundant toward the north and northwest, and I noticed a particular stream of them not far from the constellation of the Great Bear. Some idea may be formed of their number and brilliancy, from the fact that when I went to bed, though the field of sky visible through my window as I lay, was very small, it was being continually crossed by the meteors, and a looking-glass which hung on the wall was every moment brilliantly lit up with the reflection of the explosions which occurred. During the short time I observed them, many hundreds of meteors fell, and, as there was no perceptible diminution in their number, I have no doubt during the night their number must have been tens of thousands.”34 The Independence Belge, of Nov. 16th, gives the following description of the meteoric shower as it appeared in France: “At first, but a few stars were noticeable, darting off with great rapidity through space. Then they shot off in pairs, then in groups, flying in all directions; until, at length, it became impossible to count them. The majority of them left behind them a luminous trail, and exploded immediately before disappearing. In their rapid courses through the heavens, they appeared to chase one another. The whole firmament was nothing but a brilliant race course. This remarkable sight lasted from two to three hours, during which time one might have counted several millions of these celestial visitors.” NUMBER, SIZE, AND COLOR OF THE METEORS.
Great numbers of these meteors are described as larger in apparent size and more brilliant in splendor, than stars of the first magnitude. One very splendid one, of a bright purple color, was seen over Cardiff, whose apparent size was three times that of Jupiter; its train, which was at first straight, took the form of a serpent, then of an egg, and was visible twelve minutes. The very brilliant one, in the shape of a horseshoe, which was visible twenty minutes, has been already described. Some were as large as a cricket ball, and “some could only be compared to the moon for magnitude.” One of immense dimensions, which flashed across the sky from east to west, was colored red, blue, green, orange, and amber. Herschel, the astronomer, describes one seen by himself in Glasgow, whose trail assumed the form of “an imposing ring of flame, three or four degrees in width; it remained visible for fourteen minutes, gradually expanding itself into a heart-shaped loop, until it enclosed the chief stars of Ursa Major in a wide fantastic wreath, before it disappeared.” “One or two,” says the Liverpool Journal, “were so magnificent as to illumine the whole heavens, and could only be compared, in brilliancy and splendor, to the most gorgeous of the Northern Light phenomena witnessed in this latitude.” The general color of the meteors was a vivid pale blue, varying in some cases to purple. Some shone with a yellowish light, others with a deep red. Some were of an orange hue, and others seemed to be balls of copper-colored fire. The trains were of a brilliant emerald or pea-green color. To see the dark heavens flashing, blazing and exploding with fire-balls, and stars of various colors and sizes, and in countless numbers, must have been indeed a grand and beautiful sight. According to observations made at Greenwich Observatory, near London, as given in the London Herald, the period of greatest splendor was between one and two o’clock; and in that one hour five thousand meteors were counted. The shower had reached its maximum at 1:20; at which time the stars were darting forth from the constellation Leo like an incessant shower of rockets, at the rate of one hundred and twenty-three a minute. The whole number counted at Greenwich, with the naked eye, according to the Herald, was 8,485. Other statements say as many as 12,000. A scientific observer, Mr. T. W. Weare, who witnessed the display on the seacoast, at Weston-super-Mare, where the maximum was not reached till about 2 o’clock, asserts that from 1:15 to 2:30, the meteoric discharges, as seen from that place, were “not less than three in every second of time, making 13,500 in one hour and a quarter.” But so rapid was the discharge of meteors during the period of greatest frequency, that no eye could observe them all, and the actual number visible is admitted to have been much larger than the number counted. An observer in the Isle of Wight, after counting fifteen hundred, says, in the Times, that at 1:13 “the falls became so incessant that it was impossible to count numbers fast enough.” Prof. Hind, the celebrated astronomer, states that after counting, from Bishop’s Observatory, Twickenham, 1,120 fallings, in the hour from midnight to one o’clock, and 500 in the next seven minutes, there was then a great and sudden increase, to an extent “which rendered it impossible to count the number. At this time the appearance of the whole heavens was very beautiful, not to say magnificent.” Prof. Talmage, of Barclay’s Observatory, describes the sight as one “never to be forgotten, and greatly resembling that shower which was observed in North America, on the 12th and 13th of November, 1833;” and a member of the Liverpool Historic Society, who states that the period of greatest display over that place, was at three o’clock in the morning, thinks “it must have been quite as numerous there at that hour, as it was in Boston in 1833.” The showers which passed over France and Spain, seem to have been more numerous than those observed in Great Britain. The observer in Saragossa estimating them by tens of thousands, and the Independence Belge by millions. Further accounts from Southern and Eastern Europe may yet tell us of other displays of celestial fireworks on a grander scale than those seen at the north. In the meantime, let us all lift up our heads and rejoice, for the signs of our dear Lord’s return are multiplying, and the day of our redemption is drawing nigh. God speed the day.