The Night The Stars Fell

[Subdeacon Joe]

In the pre-dawn hours of November 12, 1833, the sky over North America seemed to explode with falling stars. Unlike anything anyone had ever seen before, and visible over the entire continent, an Illinois newspaper reported “the very heavens seemed ablaze.” An Alabama newspaper described “thousands of luminous bodies shooting across the firmament in every direction.” Observers in Boston estimated that there were over 72,000 “falling stars” visible per hour during the remarkable celestial storm.

The Lakota people were so amazed by the event that they reset their calendar to commemorate it. Joseph Smith, traveling with Mormon refugees, noted in his diary that it was surely a sign of the Second Coming. Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglas, and Harriet Tubman, among many others, described seeing it. It became known as “The Night the Stars Fell.”

So, what was this amazing occurrence?

Many of those who witnessed it interpreted it as a sign of the Biblical end times, remembering words from the gospel of St. Mark: “And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.” But Yale astronomer Denison Olmsted sought a scientific explanation, and shortly afterwards he issued a call to the public—perhaps the first scientific crowd-sourced data gathering effort. At Olmsted’s request, newspapers across the country printed his call for data: “As the cause of ‘Falling Stars’ is not understood by meteorologists, it is desirable to collect all the facts attending this phenomenon, stated with as much precision as possible. The subscriber, therefore, requests to be informed of any particulars which were observed by others, respecting the time when it was first discovered, the position of the radiant point above mentioned, whether progressive or stationary, and of any other facts relative to the meteors.”

Olmsted published his conclusions the following years, the information he had received from lay observers having helped him draw new scientific conclusions in the study of meteors and meteor showers. He noted that the shower radiated from a point in the constellation Leo and speculated that it was caused by the earth passing through a cloud of space dust. The event, and the public’s fascination with it, caused a surge of interest in “citizen science” and significantly increased public scientific awareness. 

Nowadays we know that every November the earth passes through the debris in the trail of a comet known as Tempel-Tuttle, causing the meteor showers we know as the Leonids. Impressive every year, every 33 year or so they are especially spectacular, although very rarely attaining the magnificence of the 1833 event.

The Leonid meteor showers are ongoing now and are expected to peak on November 18. But don’t expect a show like the one in 1833. This year at its peak the Leonids are expected to generate 15 “shooting stars” per hour.

November 12, 1833, one hundred ninety years ago today, was “The Night the Stars Fell.”

The image is an 1889 depiction of the event.

 

[Tell Sackett SASS 18436]

I read about that decades ago! Been wishing for a replay most of my life!

No luck so far!

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

My Granddad (rest his soul!) saw Halley's Comet when it was truly impressive.

I was so looking forward to seeing it as well.

When it came past and it was less than a non-event ... well, I was kind of disappointed ... just like every time the news screams in panic about a Solar Mass Ejection that will fry our satellites, incinerate our electronics and light fires in the sky clear down to the Equator ... and here on the soggy south shore of Lake Erie, I've seen just a whole lot of nothing at all.

One time I saw noctilucent clouds, but as far as the Aurora, a grand comet or a thick swarm of white-hot meteors searing through the atmosphere ...

... nope.

[Cypress Sun]

I was lucky enough to be camping far away from the city on a moonless night. We had a good spot in a clearing and it was completely dark except for the fire and lanterns. As I lay in the lawn chair looking up at the stars, I started seeing meteors, just one at a time and then getting more numerous. I didn't know anything about a meteor shower being expected, so it was quite a surprise. I told the group I was with and we turned out the lanterns and doused the campfire as much as we could without putting it out.

We all watched the meteors and were we were seeing 4 or 5 a minute for about a 1/2 hour, then it was like someone slowly turned off the faucet and it stopped. Many of them weren't just the white streaks across the sky that one normally sees. Quite a few of them left luminous green/purple trails behind them.  It was really a sight to see. This was in the late 80's either in March or October (that's when we would all go together as a group).

I think the secret to a good experience when viewing a meteor shower is to get as far away from the city as possible to avoid all of the artificial light sources.

 

I saw the comet in 1997, it was not a good omen. My gal's (ex now) mother passed away suddenly and a week later, my mother passed away after a brain amorism. All of that started a week after the comet was plainly visible to the naked eye. I don't look for them now.

[Subdeacon Joe]

I've been blessed to see a few that weren't just short, very brief, streaks in the sky.  A couple left a trail that stretched across about a quarter of the sky, and one we could see fragment (although that may have been a piece of space junk coming back to Earth).  That last was back in the late 1970s.

Something else that must have been quite the sight was the Aurora over the Fredericksburg Battlefield.  

[Red Gauntlet , SASS 60619]