[meteorite-list] Texas State Astronomers Solve Walt Whitman Meteor Mystery

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2010 14:31:54 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201006042131.o54LVsSd001122_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.txstate.edu/news/news_releases/news_archive/2010/06/YearOfMeteors060110.html

Texas State astronomers solve Walt Whitman meteor mystery
Posted by Jayme Blaschke
University News Service
May 28, 2010

In his landmark collection "Leaves of Grass", famed poet Walt Whitman
wrote of a "strange huge meteor-procession" in such vivid detail that
scholars have debated the possible inspiration for decades.

Now, a team of astronomers from Texas State University-San Marcos has
applied its unique brand of forensic astronomy to the question,
rediscovering one of the most famous celestial events of Whitman's
day--one that inspired both Whitman and famed landscape painter Frederic
Church--yet became inexplicably forgotten by modern times.

Texas State physics professors Donald Olson and Russell Doescher,
English professor Marilynn S. Olson and Honors Program student Ava G.
Pope publish their findings in the July 2010 edition of Sky &
Telescope magazine, on newsstands now.

"This is the 150th anniversary of the event that inspired both Whitman
and Church," Donald Olson said. "It was an Earth-grazing meteor procession."

Fires in the sky

Whitman, known as a keen observer of the sky, included significant
references to contemporary as well as cosmic events in his poem "Year of
Meteors. (1859-60.)" published in Leaves of Grass. A "great comet" in
the poem that appeared unexpectedly in the northern sky is readily
identified as the Great Comet of 1860, which follows the path Whitman
described and was seen by most of the world.

>From Whitman's description, the Texas State research team immediately
suspected the other celestial event he wrote about was the rare
phenomenon known as an Earth-grazing meteor procession.

"Meteor processions are so rare most people have never heard of them,"
Olson said. "There was one in 1783 and a Canadian fireball procession in
1913. Those were all the meteor processions we knew of."

An Earth-grazing meteor is one where the trajectory takes the meteor
through the Earth's atmosphere and back out into interplanetary space
without ever striking the ground. A meteor procession occurs when a
meteor breaks up upon entering the atmosphere, creating multiple meteors
traveling in nearly identical paths.

The rarity of meteor processions, however, has proven problematic to
scholars. Whitman's description has alternately been ascribed to the
1833 Leonid meteor storm, the 1858 Leonids and a widely-observed
fireball in 1859. Although Whitman is documented as having observed the
1833 Leonids, the Texas State researchers were able to discount that
meteor storm because the timeframe conflicts with the poem's, and
Whitman's descriptions of the two events are very different. The 1858
Leonids were also discounted after the research team discovered a dating
error misattributing some of Whitman's observations of the 1833 Leonids
to the latter year.

By contrast, the 1859 fireball was well-documented and happened during
the timeframe of the poem. The fireball, however, was a single meteor,
not a procession. Compounding the problem, the 1859 fireball was a
daylight meteor, whereas Whitman describes the procession as happening
at night.

The art of rediscovery

A chance clue from the 19th century artist Frederic Church proved key to
unraveling the mystery. A decade ago, Olson saw a painting on the back
cover of an exhibition catalog which showed the scene Whitman had
described. Church's painting, titled "The Meteor of 1860," clearly
depicted a meteor procession. Not only that, but the catalog gave the
date of Church's observance: July 20, 1860, well within the timeframe of
Whitman's poem. An accomplished landscape painter, Church was a member
of the Hudson River School, living beneath the same skies as Whitman.

"We went to Church's house, and the people who know him and his art
well, who've studied him, say, 'Oh, he wouldn't have painted it like
that based on somebody's say-so. He must have seen it,'" Olson said.
"The artist and his wife, who were honeymooning that summer, kept the
painting in their bedroom for many years."

"We went to a small research library and found old diaries of Theodore
Cole, a friend of Church's, from July of 1860," Pope said. "They tell us
Church was, in fact, in Catskill, New York, so he wasn't off in some far
distant land."

Armed with this intriguing new date, the Texas State researchers began
poring through newspapers of the time for verification. What they found
surprised even them. A large Earth-grazing meteor broke apart on the
evening of July 20, 1860, creating a spectacular procession of multiple
fireballs visible from the Great Lakes to New York State as it burned
through the atmosphere and continued out over the Atlantic Ocean.

"Any town that had a newspaper within all those states is going have a
story on this," Olson said. "We have hundreds of eyewitness accounts,
but there are probably hundreds more we don't even have.

"From all the observations in towns up and down the Hudson River Valley,
we're able to determine the meteor's appearance down to the hour and
minute," Olson said. "Church observed it at 9:49 p.m. when the meteor
passed overhead, and Walt Whitman would've seen it at the same time,
give or take one minute."

Some of the most influential publications in the U.S.--including the
New York Times, Smithsonian and Harper's Weekly --devoted major
coverage to the event, and countless letters about it were published.
/Scientific America/n went so far as to declare it "the largest meteor
that has ever been seen."

"They describe it just as Church painted it. It was visible for about 30
seconds, and passing horizontally, so it was, in fact, an Earth-grazer,"
Pope said. "A really cool part is that the Catskill newspaper describes
it as dividing into two parts with scintillations, exactly like the
painting."

This broad public attention, as well as study by many professional
astronomers of the day, made the meteor procession of 1860 one of the
single most famous celestial events of its day, and quite possibly the
most documented meteor appearance in history. Despite this, memory of
the dazzling event faded so much that by the middle of the 20th century
scholars were left puzzled over what Whitman had actually seen.

"Its appearance, right before the Civil War, at a time growth and
anxiety for America, made it a metaphor and portent in the public
imagination," Marilynn Olson said.
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Received on Fri 04 Jun 2010 05:31:54 PM PDT