Nat the Navigator. A Life of Nathaniel Bowditch. For Young Persons

by Henry I. Bowditch

OBSERVATIONS OF ONE OF THEM.

In 1815, Mr. Bowditch published another paper, which I may be able to explain to you in some degree. You have all heard of falling stars, or meteors, and probably most of you have seen them frequently, when walking at night, when the sky is clear. Some of these are very small; they seem at a great distance. They suddenly appear in our heavens, and as suddenly disappear, and perhaps nothing more is heard or seen of them. Others, on the contrary, appear larger, and fall to the earth after having traversed a great portion of the heavens. On the 14th of December, 1807, one of the most curious exploded, and fell over Weston, in Connecticut. Mr. Bowditch, in his Memoir, writes thus:—

“The extraordinary meteor which appeared at Weston, in Connecticut, on the 14th of December, 1807, and exploded with several discharges of stones, having excited great attention throughout the United States, and being one of those phenomena of which few exact observations are to be found in the history of physical science, I have thought that a collection of the best observations of its appearance at different places, with the necessary deductions for determining, as accurately as possible, the height, direction, velocity, and magnitude of the body, would not be unacceptable to the Academy, since facts of this kind, besides being objects of great curiosity, may be useful in the investigation of the origin and nature of these meteors; and as the methods of making these calculations are not fully explained in any treatise of trigonometry common in this country, I have given the solutions of two of the most necessary problems, with examples calculated at full length. The second problem is not, to my knowledge, given in any treatise of spherics. The observations of the meteor, which, after many inquiries, were found to have been made with sufficient accuracy to be introduced in the present investigation, were those made at Wenham, about seven miles north-easterly of Salem, by Mrs. Gardner, a very intelligent lady, who had an opportunity of observing it with great attention; those at Weston, by Judge Wheeler and Mr. Staples; and those at Rutland, in Vermont, by William Page, Esq.” After giving the requisite solutions, he proceeds: “Some time after the appearance of the meteor, I went with Mr. Pickering to Mrs. Gardner’s house, at Wenham, where she had observed the phenomenon. She informed us that on the morning of the 14th of December, 1807, when she arose, she went towards the window of her chamber, which looks to the westward, for the purpose of observing the weather, according to her invariable practice for many years past. The sky was clear, except a few thin clouds in the west. It was past daybreak, and, by estimation, about half an hour before sunrise, or seven o’clock. The meteor was immediately observed just over the southern part of the barn in her farm-yard, nearly in front of the window; its disk was well defined, and it resembled the moon so much, that, unprepared as Mrs. G.’s mind was for a phenomenon of that nature, she was not at first aware that it was not the moon, till she perceived it in motion, when her first thought (to use her own words) was, ‘Where is the moon going to?’ The reflection, however, was hardly made, when she corrected herself, and with her eye followed the body with the closest attention throughout its whole course. It moved in a direction nearly parallel to the horizon, and disappeared behind a cloud northward of the house of Samuel Blanchard, Esq. She supposed the meteor to have been visible about half a minute.

“The attention of Judge Wheeler was first drawn by a sudden flash of light, which illuminated every object. Looking up, he discovered, in the north, a globe of fire just then passing behind the cloud which obscured, though it did not entirely hide, the meteor. In this situation its appearance was distinct and well defined, like that of the sun seen through a mist. It rose from the north, and proceeded in a direction nearly perpendicular to the horizon, but inclining by a very small angle to the west, and deviating a little from the plane of a great circle, but in pretty large curves, sometimes on one side of the plane and sometimes on the other, but never making an angle with it of more than four or five degrees. Its apparent diameter was about one half or two thirds the apparent diameter of the full moon. Its progress was not so rapid as that of common meteors and shooting stars. When it passed behind the thinner clouds, it appeared brighter than before; and when it passed the spots of clear sky, it flashed with a vivid light, yet not so intense as the lightning of a thunder-storm. Where it was not too much obscured by thick clouds, a waving, conical train of paler light was seen to attend it, in length about ten or twelve diameters of the body. In the clear sky a brisk scintillation was observed about the body of the meteor, like that of a burning firebrand carried against the wind. It disappeared about fifteen degrees short of the zenith, and about the same number of degrees west of the meridian. It did not vanish instantaneously, but grew, pretty rapidly, fainter and fainter, as a red-hot cannon-ball would do if cooling in the dark, only with much more rapidity. The whole period between its first appearance and total extinction was estimated at about thirty seconds. About thirty or forty seconds after this, three loud and distinct reports, like those of a four-pounder near at hand, were heard. Then followed a rapid succession of reports less loud, so as to produce a continued rumbling. This noise continued about as long as the body was in rising, and died away, apparently, in the direction from which the meteor came. Mr. Staples observed that when the meteor disappeared, there were apparently three successive efforts or leaps of the fire-ball, which grew more dim at every throe, and disappeared with the last. From the various accounts which we have received of the appearance of the body, at different places, we are inclined to believe that the time between the disappearance and report, as estimated by Judge Wheeler, is too little, and that a minute is the least time that could have intervened.

OBSERVATION OF THEM.

THEIR NATURE.

“The observations made at Rutland were procured by the kind offices of Professor Hall, of Middlebury College, Vermont, to whom Mr. Page communicated his valuable observations, in a paper expressed in the following terms: ‘I was at the west door of my house, on Monday morning, the 14th of December, 1807, about daylight; and perceiving the sky suddenly illuminated, I raised my eyes and beheld a meteor of a circular form, in the south-westerly part of the heavens, rapidly descending to the south, leaving behind it a vivid, sparkling train of light. The atmosphere near the south part of the horizon was very hazy; but the passage of the meteor behind the clouds was visible until it descended below the mountains, about twenty miles south of this place. There were white, fleecy clouds scattered about the sky, but none so dense as to obscure the track of the meteor. I now lament that I did not make more particular observations at the time; and I should probably, until this day, have considered it to be what is commonly called a “falling star,” had I not read in the New York papers an account of the explosion of a meteor, and the falling of some meteoric stones near New Haven, Connecticut, which, by recurring to circumstances then fresh in my recollection, I found to be on the same morning that I observed the meteor at Rutland. I am indebted to my learned friend Dr. Samuel Williams for his aid and directions in ascertaining the situation of the meteor when I first observed it, and its course, and also for the order of my observations: Form, circular; magnitude, less than a quarter of the diameter of the moon; color, red, vivid light; tail, or train of light, about eight times the length of its diameter, at the least, projected opposite to its course.’”

I quote these to give you some idea of the appearance of this meteor, and likewise of Mr. Bowditch’s diligence. From the examination of all the accounts given him, he came to the conclusion that the body moved at the rate of more than three miles per second, and at the height of eighteen miles above the surface of the earth. With regard to the magnitude of the body, the results were less accurate; and the probability is, that all the body did not fall, but merely passed through the air, and continued on its course into unknown regions of space.[10]

EUROPEAN FAME.