Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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These Difficulties Would In Great Part
Be Removed, If The Direction Of The Movement Of Falling-Stars
Allowed Us To Consider Them As Bodies With A Solid Nucleus, As
Cosmic Phenomena (Belonging To Space Beyond The Limits Of Our
Atmosphere), And Not As Telluric Phenomena (Belonging To Our Planet
Only).
Supposing the meteors of Cumana to have been only at the usual
height at which falling-stars in general move,
The same meteors
were seen above the horizon in places more than 310 leagues distant
from each other.* (* It was this circumstance that induced Lambert
to propose the observation of falling-stars for the determination
of terrestrial longitudes. He considered them to be celestial
signals seen at great distances.) How great a disposition to
incandescence must have prevailed on the 12th November, in the
higher regions of the atmosphere, to have rendered during four
hours myriads of bolides and falling stars visible at the equator,
in Greenland, and in Germany!
M. Benzenberg observes, that the same cause which renders the
phenomenon more frequent, has also an influence on the large size
of the meteors, and the intensity of their light. In Europe, the
greatest number of falling stars are seen on those nights on which
very bright ones are mingled with very small ones. The periodical
nature of the phenomenon augments the interest it excites. There
are months in which M. Brandes has reckoned in our temperate zone
only sixty or eighty falling-stars in one night; and in other
months their number has risen to two thousand.
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