[meteorite-list] 1880 German Encyclopedia of Astronomy

From: Bernd Pauli HD <bernd.pauli_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:07:02 2004
Message-ID: <3DB1C4E9.368A0F07_at_lehrer.uni-karlsruhe.de>

For Your Reading Pleasure :-)

Meteorites:

Meteorites are those small celestial bodies that orbit the Sun in closed
orbits both as single bodies as well as large cloud-like agglomerations.
The Earth's orbit intersects several of these meteoric orbits and it is
then that these small bodies occur as falling stars or bolides (lit by
friction in the Earth's atmosphere) and fall to the Earth's surface as
meteoric stones provided that the direction of their course causes them
to do so. As their content in iron is mostly considerable, the selfsame
are also called meteoric irons. From August 10 till August 13 and around
November 12, the Earth wanders through meteoric clouds, and the shooting
stars of August are called Perseids, those of November Leonids, because
the former emanate from the constellation Perseus, and the latter from
the constellation Leo. After a period of 33 years, the Leonids fall in
such large numbers that they completely illuminate the sky during
several hours of the night.

Should it sound a little bit clumsy then I have succeeded in
translating what it also sounds like in German of yesteryear :-)

Best regards,

Bernd
Received on Sat 19 Oct 2002 04:47:37 PM PDT