I have seen numerous shooting stars and, closer up, “fire balls” in the sky, but I have never seen ones that lit up the entire sky like those described in this article from 1889.
Shooting Stars
Wonders of the Great Fire-Balls That Visit Our Planet
Great fireballs are much more numerous than any one would suppose who had not paid attention to the subject. Nor need this be a matter of surprise if it be remembered that when a fireball does arrive it is only by a favorable combination of circumstances that any particular individual is privileged to witness the exhibition.
As to the brilliant light from some of these great fireballs, there are numerous statements. We are not infrequently told that even the beams of the full moon are ineffectual by comparison with the blaze of the meteor; and we find a high authority asserting that one of these bodies displayed a flash as “blinding as the sun.” But our knowledge of the actual illuminating power of meteors is almost unavoidable of rather an inaccurate description. We could measure the light, no doubt, with all practicable precision if we knew when and where to expect it, for then we could bring a suitable photometric apparatus to bear at the critical moment. In the absence of any precise information, we are forced to make the most of such occasional comparisons as may be available. On the 29th of July, 1878, a fireball was seen which created so splendid an illumination that “the smallest objects were visible at Manchester.” An eye witness states that when at its best the fireball had the luster of a powerful electric light seen from a distance of thirty or forty yards, though at the moment the fireball must certainly have been forty-five miles away. We can make a comparative estimate of the intrinsic intensity of a light which when received from a distance of forty-five miles, has a brilliancy equal to that of a known source thirty-five yards away. It is thus shown that the fireball must have emitted more light than five millions of the electric lamps.
Fortunate indeed would the astronomer have been who, guided by some miraculous presence, had gone to the ancient city of York on the evening of the 23d of February, 1879, and on the tower of the glorious minster spent the night in observation of the heavens. It would have been his privilege to have witness a majestic meteor under circumstances of almost unique magnificence.
It was at seven minutes before three that such few stragglers as the streets of York still contained saw a pear-shaped ball of fire traveling across the sky. It drenched the ancient city with a flood of light. The superb front of the minster never before glowed with so romantic an illumination. The unwonted brilliancy streamed through every aperture in every window in the city, every wakeful eye was instantly on the alert, every light sleeper started up suddenly to know what was the matter. Even those whom the blaze of the midnight light had failed to awaken were only permitted to protract their slumbers for another minute and a half. Only until an awful crash, like a mighty peal of thunder, burst over the town, shaking the doors, the windows, and even the houses themselves. The whole city was thus alarmed. Every one started at the noise. But that noise was not a clap of thunder. Nor was it produced by an earthquake. It was merely the explosion of the fireball which flung itself against the atmosphere after its unmeasurable voyage through space.
Let us imagine a wayfarer in the streets of Newcastle on the same morning. He is struggling on his way in dense darkness, and through a raging storm of snow. An instantaneous transformation scene takes place. Suddenly there was light above and around which rendered the white mantle of the city as bright as a summer day. The observer will at once see that this wondrous illumination is not lightning. A flash of lightning lasts for an inconceivably small fraction of a second. But while a man could count fifty the town glows with this strange illumination. And strange it is, for the source of the light is not visible. As the snowstorm would have hidden the sun itself at midday, so in the dead of night it hid the great meteor. An exquisite phase of the phenomenon was presented by the changes in the hue of the light, which passed from a brilliant white to a beautiful blue ere is disappeared.
Perhaps the most remarkable instance of the explosion of a meteor is recorded in the case of the great fireball so widely observed in American on the 21st of December, 1876. The movements of this superb object have been carefully studied by Prof. H. A. Newton and Prof. D. Kirkwood. For a prodigious span of a thousand miles this meteor tore over the American continent with a speed of some ten or fifteen miles a second. It originated in Kansas at a height of seventy-five miles. These it glided over the Mississippi, over the Missouri; it passed to the south of Lake Michigan; it made a short voyage over Lake Erie, and it can not have been very far from the falls of Niagara, when by becoming invisible all further traces of its movements were lost. While passing a point midway between Chicago and St. Louis a frightful explosion shivered the meteor into a cluster of brilliant balls of fire, which seemed to chase each other across the sky. This cluster must have been about forty miles long and five miles wide. The detonation by which the explosion was accompanied was a specially notable incident of the meteor. It was not only heard with terrific intensity in the neighborhood, but the volume of sound was borne to great distances. Bloomington, in Indiana, is one hundred and eighty-five miles from the actual point in the sky where the meteor was rent in pieces, yet about the neighborhood of Bloomington not only was the sound of a frightful explosion heard, but the shock of the concussion was actually felt to such a degree that some of those who experienced it thought an earthquake must have happened.
The tremendous volume of sound that must have been emitted is forcibly presented to us when we consider the interval of time that elapsed between the moment when the inhabitants of Bloomington saw the gorgeous procession of fireballs streaming over the heavens, and the moment when the appalling crash burst on their ears. Every one is familiar with the fact that the flash of the gun is seen ere the report is heard, and the greater the distance of the gun the longer is the interval by which the light and the noise are separated. Sound takes five second to travel a mile; light travels so quickly that the time necessary to traverse a mile, or a hundred miles, or a thousand miles, is utterly inappreciable by ordinary measurement.
The superb spectacle had been seen at Bloomington. It had excited the utmost astonishment; doubtless it had been discussed and notes had been compared by those whose good fortune had permitted them to see it. But the immediate excitement was over, friends had parted for the night; some of them had entered their houses; others had renewed their walk homeward, and had traveled nearly a mile on their journey; vehicles had driven a couple of miles; trains had run half a dozen miles; columns of newspapers had been read. Many who had seen the meteor had already forgotten it, when their ears were deafened by the arrival of the awful explosion.
Source: The Arizona sentinel. [volume] (Arizona City [Yuma], Yuma County, A.T. [Ariz.]), 18 May 1889.
