The system of
Saturn's satellites shows us likewise a group of immense width, composed of
most intimately-connected cosmical bodies. In this system, the orbit of the
outermost (the seventh) satellite has such a vast diameter, that the Earth,
in her revolution round the Sun, requires three days to traverse an extent
of space equal to this diameter. If, therefore, in one of these rings,
which we regard as the orbit of a periodical stream, the asteroids should be
so irregularly distributed as to consist of but few groups sufficiently
dense to give rise to these phenomena, we may easily understand why we so
seldom witness such glorious spectacles as those exhibited in the November
months of 1799 and 1833. The acute mind of Olbers led him almost to predict
that the next appearance of the phenomenon of shooting stars and fire-balls
intermixed, falling like flakes of snow, would not recur until between the
12th and 14th of November, 1867.
p 128
The stream of the November asteroids has occasionally only been visible in a
small section of the Earth. Thus, for instance, a very splendid 'meteoric
shower' was seen in England in the year 1837, while a most attentive and
skillful observer at Braunsberg, in Prussia only saw on the same night,
which was there uninterruptedly clear, a few sporadic shooting stars fall
between seven o'clock in the evening and sunrise the next morning.
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