Abstract
THE phenomenon referred to in his letter, by Mr. Milligan, that the principal star-showers of the year are in general accompanied simultaneously, or nearly so, by a somewhat more than ordinary abundance of shooting-stars from centres not very far distant from that of the principal display, has long been observed, and has indeed received an elaborate amount of attentive study, as a pretty clearly distinguishable character of several of those showers; but it can hardly be said that observations of those dispersed contemporaneous meteor-flights have yet been made with such satisfactory exactness as either to assign them all to real centres, or to say with certainty how many of them are stragglers from the main and from the neighbouring shower-sources. In the present imperfection of our knowledge of the phenomenon's real features, no recourse, it may be feared, can yet be had with any prospect of successful issues to hypo-thetically ventured explanations of these, either closely grouped together, or else, by perturbative attractions, erratically scattered and deflected contemporaneous meteor-systems.
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HERSCHEL, A. The Quadrantids, 1903–A Coincidence. Nature 67, 535 (1903). https://doi.org/10.1038/067535b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/067535b0
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