I'm a science geek. I love astronomy, and I love history, including the history of Science. If you ever feel the need for a healthy perspective, there is nothing quite like astronomy to put us, we "monkeys in tennis shoes", in our respective balance to the wider world around us, or to our own progress as a species. It makes a refreshing break, as well as being soothing to the spirit, to contemplate such beauty and majesty in the skies over our heads, in contrast to the air and light and noise pollution around us.
What the description from NASA does not mention, that other accounts note was that these images were accompanied by loud sounds like thunder, and that buildings and the ground were reported to shake and tremble. Some people at the time thought it was the 'end of the world', (something people tend to think too easily).William Henry Pickering used the reports of the sound to calculate the meteors at a distance from the earth of only some 35 miles.
The track of the meteors followed this line on the map to the right:
Gustav Hahn was a famous Canadian muralist, but also an avid amateur astronomer, who painted the image below taking care to place the constellations properly in relation to the meteors as he personally observed the procession. Hahn trained in Europe, in the Jugendstil in Germany, one of my favorite styles and periods of painting
The image below is from the NASA astronomy picture of the day (APOD), from the collection of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada:
One hundred years ago today the Great Meteor Procession of 1913 occurred, a sky event described by some as "magnificent" and "entrancing" and which left people feeling "spellbound" and "privileged". Because one had to be in a right location, outside, and under clear skies, only about 1,000 people noted seeing the procession. Lucky sky gazers -- particularly those near Toronto, Canada -- had their eyes drawn to an amazing train of bright meteors streaming across the sky, in groups, over the course of a few minutes. A current leading progenitor hypothesis is that a single large meteor once grazed the Earth's atmosphere and broke up. When the resulting pieces next encountered the Earth, they came in over south-central Canada, traveled thousands of kilometers as they crossed over the northeastern USA, and eventually fell into the central Atlantic ocean. Pictured above is a digital scan of a halftone hand-tinted image by the artist Gustav Hahn who was fortunate enough to witness the event first hand. Although nothing quite like the Great Meteor Procession of 1913 has been reported since, numerous bright fireballs -- themselves pretty spectacular -- have since been recorded, some even on video.
To accompany this celebration of astronomy, I'm adding the video below that was astrologically inspired around the same time, the Planets by English composer Gustav Holst, who first was exposed to Astrology, the inspiration for this music, also in 1913, and who began working on this music in 1914. I can't help but believe that Holst's interest must have been piqued as well by this event in 1913. In any case, I particularly delight in the intersection of art and science, and The Planets, Op.32 is one of my favorite pieces of music. Because of the thunderous noise that accompanied the procession of the meteors, I limited the selection the introductory movement, Mars Bringer of War.
