1913 Great Meteor Procession

Did You Know?

• William Henry Pickering noted that at eight stations in Canada a trembling of the house or ground was felt.
• Loud, thunder-like sounds were heard in many places, occasionally by people who had not seen the meteors.
• Pickering used the sound reports to calculate the height of the meteors at 35 mi.

Events of February 9

Cloudy skies over much of the densely populated northeastern United States prevented some 30 million potential observers from seeing the phenomenon, but more than a hundred reports were collected by Clarence Chant, largely from remote areas of Canada, with additional observations later unearthed by other researchers. Around 21:00 EST, witnesses saw a procession of 40 to 60 bright, slow-moving fireballs crossing from horizon to horizon on a nearly identical path, each visible for at least 30 to 40 seconds and the whole event lasting about five minutes. An observer at Appin, Ontario described two bars of flaming material traveling from northwest by west to southeast, throwing out sparks and shooting balls of fire ahead, followed by a clear, tail-less ball like a big star. Later observers noted a large white tail-less body at the rear, while the bodies continued to disintegrate and travel at different rates; in Bermuda the leading bodies appeared like large arc lights, slightly violet, followed by yellow and red fragments. Research in the 1950s by Alexander D. Mebane uncovered newspaper reports from the northern United States: in Escanaba, Michigan the Press stated the "end of the world was apprehended by many"; in Batavia, New York some saw the meteors and many heard a thundering noise; and reports came from Nunda-Dansville, New York and Osceola, Pennsylvania.

February 10

Several reports indicated a second meteor procession on the same course about five hours later, though Earth's rotation provided no obvious mechanism. A. W. Brown from Thamesville, Ontario reported seeing both the initial procession and a second one at 02:20 the next morning. Clarence Chant's original report also mentioned three groups of "dark objects" passing from west to east over Toronto on the afternoon of February 10 on the same course, which he suggested were "something of a meteoric nature."

Analysis

Clarence Chant produced the first detailed study of the reports in volume 7 of the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Later discussions by Pickering and G. J. Burns concluded the orbit was essentially satellitic. Charles Wylie attacked this explanation, attempting to prove a radiant, but Lincoln LaPaz criticized Wylie's methods as "unscientific," and further studies by LaPaz and John A. O'Keefe showed the meteors likely represented a body or group of bodies temporarily captured into orbit about Earth before disintegrating. O'Keefe suggested the Cyrillids could have been the last remnant of a circumterrestrial ring formed from ejecta of a postulated lunar volcano, a development of his hypothesis on the origin of tektites.