Abstract
THE object of the Committee was, as last year, to present a condensed report of the observations which they have received, and to indicate the progress of Meteoric Astronomy during the interval that has elapsed since the last report. A valuable list of communications on the appearances of luminous meteors has been forwarded to the Committee in the course of the year, as well as regular observations of star showers The heights and velocities of thirteen shooting stars obtained by the co-operation of Mr. Glaisher's staff of observers at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, during the watch for meteors on the nights of the 5 th to the 12th of August last, are sufficiently accordant with the velocity of the Perseids, as previously determined by similar means in the year 1863, to afford a satisfactory conclusion that the results of direct observation are in very close agreement with those derived from the Astronomical Theory of the August Meteor Stream. On the mornings of the 13th to the 15th of November last, a satisfactory series of observations of the November star shower (as far as its return could be identified), recorded at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and at several other British Association stations, concurs with very similar descriptions of its appearance in the United States of America, in showing the rapid decrease of intensity of this display, since the period of greatest brightness which it attained in the years 1866 and 1867.
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Observations of Luminous Meteors in the Years 1870–71 * . Nature 4, 350–351 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/004350a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/004350a0