The Leonid and Bielid Meteor-Showers of November, 1902

Abstract

IN a letter just now received from Mr. W. H. Milligan, in Belfast, some interesting details are given of observations made in his watch for Leonids at and near the November date of the shower's recently looked for reappearance. As a cloudy state of the sky prevailed generally in England on the nights in question, the result obtained in a prolonged clear view of the sky on at least one of the two most probably predicted mornings of November 15 and 16 for the shower's reappearance, that but one true Leonid, and no sign whatever of any great abundance of the shower, was visible in a watch of 4 hours on the first of those two mornings, possesses considerable interest from the fresh support which it affords to the lately calculated conclusions of very eminent astronomers, that the meteor-stream's celestial route, instead of just crossing the earth's orbit-track, as it did in the shower's three last previous returns and in many bygone centuries, now probably falls, by the effects of planetary perturbations on its course, sufficiently far inside the earth's orbit to no longer give us the magnificent spectacle of a great star-shower.