Wonders in the Sky (65 page)

13 November 1799, Gerona, Catalonia, Spain
Maneuvering stars

Numerous brilliant “shooting stars” are seen to cluster together, and then separate.

 

Source: A. Quintana, “Assaig sobre el clima d'Olot.,”
Servei Meteorològic de Catalunya
, Generalitat de Catalunya, Notes d'Estudi 69: 3-88 (Barcelona, 1938).

By the end of the 18
^th
century political events reflected a nearly-universal thirst for knowledge and liberty, and the rejection of authoritarian principles. The American Declaration of Independence in 1776, and the French Revolution of 1789, had ushered in a new, often troubled series of intellectual movements inspired by science.

In 1797, German astronomer Olbers had published a method for calculating the orbits of comets, thus removing them from the realm of cosmic enigmas to treat them rationally as solar system objects. Lithography was invented the following year by Aloys Senefelder, another German. In 1800 William Herschel discovered infrared solar rays and Volta produced electricity from batteries of zinc and copper.

Nothing could now stop the rise of science and technology: in 1801 Bichat published his
Anatomie Générale
while Lalande released a catalogue of 47,390 stars. An American engineer, Robert Fulton, built the first submarine, the Nautilus. London became a city of 864,000 and Paris claimed 547,000 inhabitants. It was the time of Beethoven, Paganini, and Haydn. The world had made a momentous transition from the Age of Reason to the Enlightenment.

As accurately noted by the people's chronicle of our own times, Wikipedia, “The Enlightenment was a time when the solar system was truly discovered: with the accurate calculation of orbits, the discovery of the first planet since antiquity, Uranus by William Herschel, and the calculation of the mass of the sun using Newton's theory of universal gravitation. These series of discoveries had a momentous effect on both pragmatic commerce and philosophy. The excitement engendered by creating a new and orderly vision of the world, as well as the need for a philosophy of science that could encompass the new discoveries, greatly influenced both religious and secular ideas. If Newton could order the cosmos with natural philosophy, so, many argued, could political philosophy order the body politic.”

This was also the period when humanity began to challenge gravity as well, and made the first attempts to fly. In the late 1780s, as enthusiasm for the “Industrial Revolution” was felt, the Montgolfier brothers invented the
montgolfière
, or hot air balloon. They were the sons of a paper manufacturer at Annonay, near Lyon. When playing with inverted paper bags over open fire they found that the bags rose to the ceiling. This led them to experiment further with larger bags made of other materials. During 1782 they tested indoors with silk and linen balloons.

On December 14, 1782 they succeeded in an outdoor launch of an 18 m
³
silk bag, which reached an altitude of 250 m. On June 5, 1783, as a first public demonstration, they sent up at Annonay a 900 m
³
linen bag inflated with hot air. Its flight covered 2 km, lasted 10 minutes, and had an estimated altitude of over 1600 m. The subsequent test sent up the first living beings in a basket: a sheep, a duck and a cockerel, to ascertain the effects of higher altitude. This was performed at Versailles, before Louis XVI of France, to gain his permission for a trial human flight.

On November 21, 1783, the first free flight by humans was made by Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes, who flew aloft for 25 minutes about 100 m above Paris for nine kilometers. (Karl Friedrich Meerwein with his flapping “ornithopter” probably preceded this event in 1781, but it never became a viable means of flight.)

Any study of unexplained aerial phenomena after the year 1800 must take into account not only the possible explanations we have already discussed (atmospheric effects, optical illusions, aurorae, meteors, comets, globular lightning, mystical visions, and hallucinations) but other causes, from simple balloon observations to over-excited press reports and hoaxes inspired by the passion of the early days of human flight.

The first half of the nineteenth century, which culminated in the worldwide extension of the Industrial Revolution that had begun around 1770 in England, was marked by a vast increase in scientific education. Curiosity towards all the phenomena of nature was encouraged; observatories and laboratories sprang up in every nation, and it became fashionable to report original contributions to the knowledge of science or, as it was called, “natural philosophy.”

In the course of their observations scientists, both amateur and professional, noted unknown phenomena and reported them without fear of censorship or ridicule. In contrast with the rigid adherence to conformism in the name of rationalism that plagues the modern academic community, there is a pleasant sense of freedom and curiosity when one reads the reports of that era. Astronomers were eager to attach their name to discoveries of comets, new planets or unusual phenomena, leading to open, unbiased examination of any novel report.

The search for a planet (tentatively named “Vulcan”) whose orbit would place it between Mercury and the Sun is a case in point. It was motivated by the irregularities in the motion of Mercury. Celestial mechanics had become sophisticated enough for astronomers of the time to record such minute differences–hence the need for actual observations of new planetoid bodies that could account for an effect on Mercury.

When Le Verrier, the celebrated director of Paris observatory whose brilliant calculations led to the discovery of Neptune in 1846, tried to prove his hypothesis about the existence of an intra-mercurial planet, he actually encouraged serious observers the world over to come forward with any sighting of unknown objects in the vicinity of the sun. As Le Verrier told the French Academy of Sciences on 2 July 1849: “I felt profound surprise, as I worked on the theory of Mercury and saw that the mean motion of that planet, as determined by observations of the last 40 years, was notably weaker than indicated by the comparison of older data with modern ones. My attempts to reach a theory that would resolve this have been unsatisfactory so far.” (quoted in
L'Evolution de l'Astronomie au XIXe Siècle
, by Pierre Busco. Paris: Larousse, 1912).

Ten years later, in a celebrated letter to Faye, Le Verrier stated he had reached a solution, calling for the existence of one or more intra-mercurial planets. He went on to call for careful observation of any unusual object passing in front of the sun:

“The present discussion should confirm astronomers in their zeal to scrutinize the surface of the sun every day. It is most important that any spot of regular shape, as small as it is, which would happen to be seen on the disk of the Sun, be tracked for some time with the greatest care, in order to ascertain its nature through knowledge of its motion.”

This invitation to observe the sky for anomalous objects sent hundreds of professionals and well-equipped amateurs to rummage through records of past observations and to spend more time at the telescope. As a result, many of the references we have accumulated in this section no longer come from obscure local papers but from the mainstream scientific literature, from the
Comptes Rendus
of the French Academy of Sciences to
Philosophy Magazine
or the
Quarterly Journal of the Royal Institute
.

The many calculations never led to the discovery of the intra-mercurial planet, much to Le Verrier's chagrin.

Early in the 20
^th
century, Einstein's relativity theory accounted nicely for the perturbations of Mercury, and astronomy no longer needed the elusive planetoid! Even the good reverend Webb, whose classic books on
Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes
are still used as a reference by astronomers the world over, suffered the indignity of having his own observations of an unknown planet censored from recent printings, such as the popular paperback edition of 1962. All such data published in the nineteenth century were swept under the weighty rug of scientific oblivion, leaving only a few people like us to recompile these “damned” facts and ask: What was it?

374.

20 March 1800, Quedlinburg, Germany
Fast-moving object

A preacher and amateur astronomer named Fritsch reported an unknown object rapidly crossing the disk of the sun.

 

Source: E. Ledger, “Observations or supposed observations of the transits of intra-mercurial planets or other bodies across the Sun's disk,”
The Observatory
3 (1879-80): 136.

375.

30 September 1801, London, England
Unusual formation

Between five and six in the morning, a very bright object was seen in the East. It was “shaped something like a cross; this was accompanied by two smaller ones like stars, one towards the left, which was also bright; and one just perceptible a little below it, the whole moving fast towards the South.”

 

Source:
London Times
, 8 October 1801, 3.

376.

7 February 1802, Quedlinburg, Germany
Dark celestial body

An unknown dark body is again observed crossing the Sun, “having rapid motion of its own” by amateur astronomer Fritsch. The tiny spot crossed the Sun in a northwesterly direction and accelerated.

 

Source: E. Ledger, “Observations or supposed observations of the transits of intra-mercurial planets or other bodies across the Sun's disk,”
The Observatory
3 (1879-80): 136.

377.

10 October 1802, Magdeburg, Germany
Astronomer's report of a dark moving object

Le Verrier reports an unknown dark object seen by Fritsch, rapidly crossing the sun's disk.

He writes: “Fritsch, at Magdeburg, saw a spot moving 2 minutes of arc in 3 minutes of time, and not seen after a cloudy interval of 4 hours.”

 

Source: Le Verrier, “Examen des observations qu'on a présentées, à diverses époques, comme pouvant appartenir aux passages d'une planète intra-mercurielle devant le disque du Soleil,”
Comptes Rendus of the French Academy of Sciences
83 (1876): 583-9, to 587-8.

378.

15 August 1803, Ormans near Evilliers, France
Luminous globes and a religious discovery

Two luminous globes emit sun-like rays and hover over a tree. Witnesses: Pierre Mille, from Malcôte, with his three daughters and a local craftsman.

The whole family was on its way to church for the Feast of the Assumption when they saw two small lights in front of an oak tree, inside which a small statue of the Virgin Mary was found upon investigation.

Some time before (at Easter) the youngest daughter of Pierre Mille had seen the Virgin accompanied by two small floating lights at the same spot, “on the path between Maizières and Ornans.”

 

Source: Abbé Louis Leroy,
Histoire des Pélerinages de la Sainte Vierge en France
, Tome II (Paris, 1874), 265.

379.

27 June 1806, Geneva, New York, USA
Dark object crossing the lunar disk

At 1:00 A.M. astronomer W. R. Brooks, director of Smith Observatory, recorded the passage of a long, dark object that crossed the disk of the moon in 3 to 4 seconds, moving west to east. It did not appear to be a bird.

Brooks was observing with a two-inch telescope at magnification 44X. The object was about one third the apparent size of the moon.

 

Source:
Science Magazine
, 31 July 1896;
Scientific American
75: 251.

380.