Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 562 of 779 - First - Home
Whenever One Is
Observed, Which Has The Diameter Of Sirius Or Of Jupiter, We Are
Sure Of Seeing The Brilliant Meteor Succeeded By A Great Number Of
Smaller Ones.
If the falling stars be very numerous during one
night, it is probable that they will continue equally so during
several weeks.
It would seem, that in the higher regions of the
atmosphere, near that extreme limit where the centrifugal force is
balanced by gravity, there exists at regular periods a particular
disposition for the production of bolides, falling-stars, and the
Aurora Borealis.* (* Ritter, like several others, makes a
distinction between bolides mingled with falling-stars and those
luminous meteors which, enveloped in vapour and smoke, explode with
great noise, and let fall (chiefly in the day-time) aerolites. The
latter certainly do not belong to our atmosphere.) Does the
periodical recurrence of this great phenomenon depend upon the
state of the atmosphere? or upon something which the atmosphere
receives from without, while the earth advances in the ecliptic? Of
all this we are still as ignorant as mankind were in the days of
Anaxagoras.
With respect to the falling-stars themselves, it appears to me,
from my own experience, that they are more frequent in the
equinoctial regions than in the temperate zone; and more frequent
above continents, and near certain coasts, than in the middle of
the ocean. Do the radiation of the surface of the globe, and the
electric charge of the lower regions of the atmosphere (which
varies according to the nature of the soil and the positions of the
continents and seas), exert their influence as far as those heights
where eternal winter reigns?
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 562 of 779
Words from 152875 to 153153
of 211363
