The Marseilles Meteorite

Abstract

IT will probably occur to most of your readers, as it immedidiately suggested itself to me, on reading in your journal of the 5th inst. a description from Les Mondes of a remarkable meteorite observed at Marseilles by M. Coggia, on the 1st of August last, that the bright object having an apparent diameter, at first of about 15′, and at last of a little over 4′, whose uncertain course was noted for eighteen minutes by the stars, was really nothing more extraordinary than a fire-balloon; or it may, possibly, have been some description of brighter signal-light. The planet Saturn, and the other stars named in the description, were all at the low altitude above the horizon, at which a fire-balloon, and other bright signal-lights of ordinary size, floating at an ordinary height in the air, would have about the apparent diameter of the “meteorite.” Its apparent diminution in size was, also, perhaps, either the effect of its increasing distance, or of its gradually fading light. After alternately remaining stationary, and changing its apparent course two or three times, it at last fell rapidly in a perpendicular direction. The burning tow, or other inflamed substance with which it was inflated, appears to have detached itself from, or, it may be, to have set fire to the balloon, since it was remarked that during its perpendicular fall to the horizon it gave out vivid scintillations.