Abstract
As I was going along the road towards Greystoke Castle at half-past eight P.M. on Friday last, April 19, I noticed a very fine meteor in a south-east direction. It was about the size of a common hand-ball, its centre being of an exceedingly brilliant white colour, surrounded by a circle of a bluish tinge, while short flickering radiations were distinctly visible on its circumference in all directions, reminding me of the sphero-stellate spiculæ of certain sponges. It was falling in a perpendicular direction, but I was not fortunate enough to see it at the beginning of its course. Its downward motion was slow and quite gradual, apparently not swifter than an ordinary india-rubber ball would fall by the gravity of its own body. There was no trail whatever left behind in its course. After two or three seconds it suddenly disappeared, before reaching the ground, without any explosion or expansion of its body. The night was very close and still, a muddiness covering the whole sky, interspersed here and there with long stratus clouds, and a beautiful halo surrounding the moon.
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FAWCETT, T. Meteor. Nature 5, 501 (1872). https://doi.org/10.1038/005501a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/005501a0
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