Abstract
ON May 16, about 11 p.m., I saw a meteor that was, I think, the most terrific, as well as the grandest, I have ever happened to see. I reached my house about ten minutes afterwards, and at once wrote down, substantially, the following unvarnished account of the phenomenon. It may have been witnessed and recorded by some one elsewhere. If so, the observer may like to compare my record of it with his own:—I was walking westward, and I was about two miles south-west of Woodstock (as the crow flies). Suddenly my attention was drawn upward by a brilliant light. I then saw a meteor high up in the western sky, and a little south of the Great Bear. It was descending at an angle of 50°. Its speed was so moderate, that I got a good observation of it. Its seeming size was, I think, quite half that of the full moon. It appearance was such as I never saw before: it struck me as being like a transparent lantern, or, rather, pail, full of burning matter. Its base was a sharply-defined broad cone. It looked as though let down from above by an unseen string, rather than falling. It seemed to be very near me. A flickering reddish flame rose, fitfully, straight up from the horizontal surface of its yellow-hued fiery mass. It vanished, without my seeing any scattering of sparks, when it was about half way between the Pointers and the horizon.
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HOSKYNS-ABRAHALL, J. [Letters to Editor]. Nature 26, 125 (1882). https://doi.org/10.1038/026125a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/026125a0
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