Meteor procession
Meteor that breaks apart into fragments travelling in the same direction
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:
- 18 August 1783 Great Meteor (Passed over Blair Atholl, the east coast of southern Scotland and England and the English Channel, breaking up over southern France or northern Italy).
- 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
- 21 December 1876 Great Meteor; sighted over Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania
- 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
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Meteor procession”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Frederic Church Meteor of 1860.jpg by Frederic Edwin Church, Public domain
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