The Brownsville daily herald. [volume] (Brownsville, Tex.) 1897-1910, 1909-11-12
STAR SHOWERS
ARE SCHEDULED
>RIC DISPLAY Is PREDICT
ED FOR TONIGHT.
Not Expected to Come Up to Former
Celestial Fireworks, As Earth
Crosses MetOric Bodies Path at
Sparsely Studded Point.

Washington, D. c., Nov. 12--Pre-
pare for the fireworks According to
the prediction of the astronomers,
the stars viii begin falling tonight
all over the country.
The display will continue on to-
morrow and Sunday nights. As
tronomers state that the coming me-
teoric display WI hardly be up to
standard. AS a maJJer of fact, the
earth cuts their orbit at perhaps
It's most sparsely studded spot. This
shower has a period roughly cores
ponding to the generations of human
life, roughly computed as three to
the century. The last great display
was due in 1889, but it was a dis
appointment when compared with
former manifestations of this period
ic maximum.
This year the earth crosses the
orbit of this belt of minuscule mem
bers OF the solar system at a point
Ten years away from the maximum
density, about a third of the circuit
of that orbit The prospects, there
fore, are that the display Will not
approach anything like the brilliance
that from time to time has been OBJ
served On the other hand the eX-
hibition, chiefly in the early morn
ing hours of Sunday, should far eX-
coed the count of the wandering
stars which blaze for moment al
most every night, silent flights of
cold incandeScence.
The penultimate display was a
oh in hn cl-
spread over three years, the peak of
its magnificence in 1866, heavy
fall in 1867 and what might be cal
led a smart shower even in 1868.
But the 1888 rain of the heavens
was most astounding. The Eastern
seaboard was most adVantageOusly
situated for observation on the night
Of November 12-13 The stars fell
as fast and thick as flakes of snow
on a winter day. Prof Olmstead
reckOned that 100000 cleaning
trains were visible in the course Of
nine hours To the ignorant it pre-
saged the crack of doom, the begin
ming of the rolling up of the heavens
like a scroll.
The pea size element is generally
accepted as the measure of the com
pOnents on the periodic shower mete-
ors. Only slightly larger is the esti-
mate made by Dr. tombstone StOney
in his address to the British Associa-
ton upon the LeOnids of 1866
The meteOrS themselves" he said,
are probably little pebbles, the larg-
er about an ounce. or perhaps two
ounces, in weight and spaced in the
denseSt part of that swarm at in
tervals of one or two miles asunder
every day The thickness of the
stream is about 10000 miles, which
.Owever, is a mere nothing COM
width is such that the earth when it
passes Obliquely through the stream
is exposed to the dOwnpour of mete-
ors for about five hours.
At intervals along its o.
comet runs the risk of several col
lisiOns, both on its outward voyage
into space and upon its return, to be
a spectacle in our heavens 1t is
merely matter of mathematics of
orbital revolution of two bodies obey
ing in different order the same cen
trail impulse.
To the slow and inevitable change
is added the suddenness of collision,
brief accomplishment of what
would otherwise be more slowly done.
Leverrier found the solar history o
the LeOnid rain to begin in the cap
ture of comet accomplished by the
enormous influence of remote Uran
us in the year 1875 of our era. Al
that or at some later period the par
ent comet was in collision with some
one of the greater planets.
Its substance was rent to pieces
and the meteor gem was set upon its
orbit. In 1888 and in 1866 the
earth tore through the nuclus of the
fragments Some few it burned and
destroyed by the friction engendered
in its atmosphere; only few, for the
estimate of 0,00O is less than the
counting of the veriest pinch of sand.