The Meteor Shower of January 2

Abstract

FROM amongst the extensive number of annually recurring meteoric displays there are few comparable, either in point of richness or brilliancy, with the January meteors. The Leonids, Perseids, and Andromedes severally form showers of greater intensity at the epochs of their periodical returns, and there can be no question that the Perseid, as an annual phenomenon, stand unsurpassed, but with the exception of these special instances, perhaps none of the many streams of shooting stars deserve a higher place than that which heralds the opening of the year. The Lyrids, Orionids, and Geminids are entitled to be considered of equal importance as affording an annual spectacle of much interest, though the former system appears during its last few returns entirely to have lost the splendour which characterised its exhibitions in former years. The January meteors, while thus meriting whatever significance is attached to a shower of the first order, have not, it must be admitted, been observed with half the diligence awarded to some other streams of similar nature. An explanation is probably to be found in the circumstance that it does not become thoroughly well visible until the morning hours. The radiant point situated at 230°.5 + 51.3° (15° following η Ursæ Majoris) in a region comparatively bare of stars, though never below our horizon, is yet, during the first half of the night, at a very low altitude, and thus its operations are limited, though not sufficiently so to cause the apparent extinction of the display. In the early evenings of January, 1879 and 1880, it furnished many fine meteors ascending in long courses from the direction of the northern horizon, and appearing in sufficient numbers to cause remark amongst ordinary persons quite unaware of the progress of a notable star shower.