Meteor procession

Oil painting by Frederic Edwin Church, The 1860 Great Meteor

A meteor procession occurs when an Earth-grazing meteor breaks apart, and the fragments travel across the sky in the same path. According to physicist Donald Olson, only four occurrences are known:[1]

  • 18 August 1783 Great Meteor[1][2] (Passed over Blair Atholl, the east coast of southern Scotland and England and the English Channel, breaking up over southern France or northern Italy).[3]
  • 20 July 1860 Great Meteor; sighted over North America, believed by Olson to be the event referred to in Walt Whitman's poem Year of Meteors, 1859–60[4][5]
  • 21 December 1876 Great Meteor; sighted over Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania[6][7][8]
  • 9 February 1913 Great Meteor Procession; a chain of slow, large meteors moving from northwest to southeast, sighted over North America, particularly in Canada, the North Atlantic and the Tropical South Atlantic

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Falk, Dan (1 June 2010). "Forensic astronomer solves Walt Whitman mystery: CultureLab (blog)". New Scientist. Archived from the original on 21 March 2016. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  2. ^ "Notes and Queries". Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. 8: 221–222. June 1914. Bibcode:1914JRASC...8..221. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  3. ^ Beech, M. (1989). "The Great Meteor of 18 August 1783". Journal of the British Astronomical Association. 99 (3): 103. Bibcode:1989JBAA...99..130B.
  4. ^ "Forensic astronomer solves Walt Whitman mystery". New Scientist. 1 June 2010. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  5. ^ "150-year-old meteor mystery solved". MSNBC. 2 June 2010. Archived from the original on 5 June 2010. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  6. ^ Herschel, Alexander Stewart (1878). "Observations of luminous meteors". Report of the forty-seventh meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science: Held at Plymouth in August 1877. John Murray. pp. 149–153.
  7. ^ MARK BOSTICK (18 February 2006). "Rochester Meteorite - NPA 12-22-1876 - Decatur, Il". www.meteorite-list-archives.com. Retrieved 18 August 2025.
  8. ^ "THE METEOR". www.nytimes.com. 28 December 1876. Retrieved 18 August 2025.


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