The Toledo chronicle. [volume] (Toledo, Tama County, Iowa) 1873-1924, 1874-09-03

| August stream requires three or foul
DAYS. The Biela stresm is~erossed oh
1inuely. the meteoroids overtaking thu
earth. The August stream is nearly
perpendicular, and the November stream
meets the earth. Again, 60 still further
away, out to the point from which We
first looked down upon the earth and
comet. We then see (by the minds eye)
the meteoroids strewn along the elliptic
orbit of the comet for hundreds of mill
ions of miles, forming stream OF I'M
known breadth, but in the scale OF the
first figures shown you about 1-50 Of
an inch in thickness. Come back
now and stand inside the stream at
its densest part. You in fact see moth
ing, but the meteoroids are all about you,
scattered quite evenly, and distant each
from its nearest neighbors twenty or
thirty miles. They all travel the same
way, and with a common motion. Once
more change your place and look up
from the earths surface. The meteoroids
can now be seen, for when they strike
the air they burn with intense light, be-
coming shooting stars. As it is from
this position only that we ever see
them, note their behavior with
more care. A shooting star coming to-
ward you appears only as bright, sta
tionary point in the sky. That point is a
marked one in every star-shower, and is
called the radiant. The meteors to the
right and left of the stationary one are,
in fact, moving in the common direction,
but they seem to move in the sky away
from the radiant In other words, the
tracks Produced backward will all meet in
one point in the sky, or in the zenith, or
at any place between. 1t will in general
rise in the cast and set in the west, like
the sun or star, keeping always its fixed
place among the stars. Need l tell you
how much we would like to have some Of
| these bits from the meteoroid stream to
handle, to try with the blow-pipe and
under the microscope, perhaps thus to
learn something of their history? We
do have something like this. AT times
large meteor masses come crashing into
the air They burn with light bright
enough to be seen over several States.
Coming down usually a little lower than
the shooting stars, most frequently to a
height of twenty five or thirty miles,
they break up with noise like the firing
of heavy artillery. to be heard over sew
eral counties Fragments scattered in
every direction fall to the ground, oft
en- over a region ten and TWEEN
ty miles in extent | can show
you several such fragments. There
are over hundred of them in
our college cabinet, one of which weighs
nearly 4 ton Between these stone-p pro
ducing meteors and the faintest shooting
star cannot find my clear line Of divis-
| ion. We have meteors that break with
| loud defamation, but no fragments are
seen to fall One such was seen in 1860
| from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, and
from Charleston to st. Louis. 1t ex-
ploded over the boundary line of Tennes-
see and Kentucky. We have others
which only break into pieces, no noise
being heard. Then we have those which
quietly burn out. Like the larger ones,
these may leave smoky trains that last
for minutes. One such have seen for
forty five minutes, as it slowly floated
away in the current of the upper air.
This, through the whole range, from
the meteor that gives us those stones and
irons for our museums down to the faint
est shooting star hardly seen by person
watching for it, we pass by the smallest
differences. They differ in size, in color
of flame, in direction, in train, in velocity.
But in astronomical character all seem
to be alike. They move in long orbits
like comets, and like comets at all angles
to the earth's orbit In fact, meteoroid
is Il small comet, not having, however,
the comets ,ail.-From Lecture By Pref
II. A. Ne,ctoa, at the SheGield Scientific
! School IF Yale College.