Wonders in the Sky (76 page)

5 February 1850, Sandwich, Kent, England
Slow-moving “red-hot iron ball”

At 6:50 P.M. according to Mr. W. H. Weekes, a small luminous object appeared stationary near Orion and approached slowly on a straight line, growing to one third the apparent diameter of the moon. It went from a speck of light to a “red-hot iron ball,” hovered for about three minutes and disappeared in a shower of fire. The object had remained stationary for 1 min 45 seconds, then moved horizontally for a full 45 seconds.

 

Source:
Report of the British Astronomical Association
(1851): 1-52 at 2-3, 38, and Baden Powell,
On Observations of luminous meteors
, op. cit.

451.

18 February 1850, Athens, Greece: Solar intruder

An unknown body was seen passing in front of the Sun. It was observed and reported by astronomer Schmidt.

 

Source: R. C. Carrington, “In the 10th number of Professor Wolf's Mittheilungen über die Sonnenflecken…”
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
20 (January 1860): 100-1.

452.

13 March 1850, Paris, France
A flying object reverses course

Mr. Goulvier-Gravier, founder of a private observatory dedicated to meteoritics, observed a magnitude 3 “shooting star” that came from the southeast and reversed course at 4:45 A.M.

 

Source: Goulvier-Gravier,
Recherches sur les Météores
(Paris: Mallet-Bachelier, 1859), figure 88 on page 300.

453.

3 October 1850, Talcot Mt., near Hartford, CT, USA
Maneuvering object

According to a paper read by Professor Brocklesby before the American Association in 1851, an observer named Graylord Wells, who was on the eastern slope of Talcot Mountain saw an unidentified object:

“The evening was clear and the moon near the meridian, when Mr. Wells saw, a little south of west, and full 60 degrees above the horizon, a bright meteor apparently a foot in diameter. It shone with an orange hue, and below was a train which seemed to be 15 or 16 feet in length, fan-shaped, and possessing an apparent breath at its further extremity of two feet. The meteor rose from east to west with a slow and steady motion, and in its progress passed above or to the north of the moon. And when it had arrived on the eastern side, directly turned toward the southeast, and dropping below the moon, a part of its attendant train swept over the lunar disk.”

The phenomenon gradually descended to the horizon in the southeast. The observer stated that this could not have lasted less than three minutes in moving the length of its train, and that the time of its visibility “could not possibly have been less than an hour, and was probably an hour and a half.”

 

Source: The
Ohio Journal of Education
2 (Dec. 1853): 411.

454.

10 October 1852. Reims, France
Wandering “star” makes a 90 degree turn

M.Coultier-Gravier, observing the sky from his private observatory to compile statistics on shooting stars, recorded an unusual “meteor” at 8 P.M. It was a third-degree object first seen near “nu” of Capricorn. It described a 30-degree trajectory in the sky, changing its direction from northwest to southwest.

 

Source: Coultier-Gravier, op. cit., 306 and fig. 97.

455.

1853, Paris, France: Red disk on slow trajectory

A witness named Amédé Guillemin, who lived on
Rue Amelot
, observed an object moving extremely slowly, horizontally above
Père-Lachaise
cemetery. The object was “a pale red disk.”

 

Source: Flammarion,
Bradytes
, op. cit., 155.

456.

22 May 1854, unknown location: Multiple unknowns

A contributor named R. P. Greg reports that a friend of his saw an object equal in size to Mercury in the vicinity of that planet, and behind it an elongated object, and “behind that something else, smaller and round.”

 

Source: Baden Powell “Report on observations of luminous meteors, 1854-55,”
Annual Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science
(1855): 79-100, at 94.

457.

21 January 1855, New Haven, Connecticut
Another red object

About 10 P.M. a man saw a brilliant red ball about two minutes in diameter, first visible about eight degrees below the guards in Ursa Minor. It seemed stationary at first, but in about fifteen seconds commenced moving slowly towards the east in an almost horizontal line, with what seemed like a slight undulatory motion. It passed below and about one degree from the star Benetuash in Ursa Major and disappeared in the distance, not far from Denebola in the constellation Leo. The observation had lasted ten minutes. The writer adds: “there was no explosion, nor was any scintillation thrown off at any time.”

 

Source:
New Haven Palladium,
23 January 1855.

458.

11 June 1855, Bonn, Germany: Dark unknown body

A dark body was seen crossing the disk of the sun. It was reported by astronomers Ritter and Schmidt.

 

Source: E. Ledger, “Observations or supposed observations of the transits of intra-Mercurial planets or other bodies across the Sun's disk,”
Observatory
3 (1879-80): 135-8, at 137.

459.