Contemporary Meteor-Showers of the Leonid and Bielid Meteor-Periods

Abstract

Part II.—Co-Bielid Showers. AMONG nearly 120 meteor-tracks of the period November 20th–30th, partly seen here in recent years, and partly drawn from the Reports of the Luminous Meteor Committee of the British Association, of the years 1861–80, and among a list of 100 Bielid-period meteor-paths observed in Italy, as will be further illustrated and more especially described below, on November 19th–30th, 1897, there were found to have occurred, in this long-past years' collection, 30 Bielid meteors and 188 unconformable or ordinary non-Bielid meteor-tracks. Several of the former meteors were recorded before the startling discovery in 1872, of the swarm of meteors connected with Biela's comet, had made known the existence of a focus of cometary Bielid meteors in this period near γ Andromedae; so that several evidently Bielid meteors of the list had never before had their true radiant-point, near γ τAndromedae assigned to them. The great body of Bielid-tracks having been subtracted, and the remaining 188 ordinary meteor-paths projected on a planisphere containing all the fifty radiant-points for the Leonid-Bielid period, of Mr. Denning's Select List, the paths of all these meteors, without any outstanding very refractory or certainly irreducible exceptions, were found to be satisfactorily referable by trueness of direction joined to suitable descriptions, to one or other of the many radiant-points contained in Mr. Denning's List.