Our Astronomical Column

Abstract

THE BIELID METEOR SHOWERs.—Mr. Willard J. Fisher, of Harvard Observatory, contributes a paper to Proc. Nat. Acad. Sciences, Dec. 1926, in which he collects a large amount of material relating to various apparitions of these showers, and plots them in the endeavour to trace the laws of their recurrence. In 1741 and 1798 the shower occurred on Dec. 6 and 7; there were also December showers in 1830, 1838, and 1847, but all since then have been in November, owing to the motion of the node. On plotting the showers they appear to group themselves along four different lines, indicating presumably that there are several condensations of meteors along the orbit, their periods being slightly different. Many of the brighter showers are separated by intervals of 13 0 years (double the period of the comet). It is noteworthy that three of the four lines in the diagram converge towards a point a few years ahead of the present time, when the date of the shower, will be Nov. 16. It will be well, therefore, to keep a careful watch for these meteors in coming years.