[meteorite-list] The Night the Sky Exploded (Weston Meteorite Fall in 1807)

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 11:20:27 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <200708131820.LAA25531_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070813/NEWS04/708130387/1003

The night the sky exploded
By Gordon Dritschilo
Rutland Herald
August 13, 2007

Two hundred years ago, houses shook as a meteorite exploded in the sky
over Connecticut.

Now, an astronomer says the observations of the event by a man in
Rutland may help determine exactly what path the shooting star followed.

Monty Robson, director of the John J. McCarthy Observatory in New
Milford, Conn., visited the Rutland Historical Society earlier this
month looking for the home of William Page, who watched the explosion in
1807.

"It was the first well-documented meteorite to fall in the New World,"
Robson said Sunday, speaking by telephone from an astronomy conference
in Arizona. "It happened just at the time when science was starting to
accept that rocks fall from the sky."

Robson said he has found much of what has been published about the
event, especially more recent writings, are based on inaccuracies and
that he has set about collecting the original observations of the explosion.

Page, after watching the explosion early in the morning of Dec. 14,
1807, recorded his observations with the help of neighbor and noted
meteorologist the Rev. Samuel Williams. Robson said they wrote a paper
together of which he has only been able to find excerpts.

"I never had any idea William Page had been involved in anything like
this," said Jim Davidson of the Rutland Historical Society.

Davidson said Page was a cashier in the early Bank of Rutland. He
assisted his father, also William Page, in the engineering of the
Bellows Falls Canal - the first canal built in the United States.

"He came here - I believe he was a doctor, but he decided to be a
businessman," Davidson said. "He was a graduate, I believe, of Yale and
was into a lot of different things."

Robson, a retired airline pilot, said one of the goals of his
all-volunteer observatory is to interest local youth in science. He said
that mission brought him to the 1807 meteorite explosion.

"I'm always looking for engaging material," he said. "I found, online, a
newspaper article. The byline was Bridgeport, Dec. 24. That meant 1807.
It said the displosion - it didn't say explosion - shook the houses in
New Milford greater than where the stones fell."

That, Robson said, sounded like the sort of thing that would get the
attention of the young people in New Milford.

The meteorite was promptly investigated by two professors from Yale who
compiled observations of the event and gathered fragments for chemical
testing - some of the first such tests ever performed.

Another study, this time by mathematician/astronomer Nathaniel Bowditch,
was published in 1815, according to Robson.

Robson said Bowditch used Page's observations, as well as those from a
Judge Wheeler in Weston, Conn., and a Mrs. Gardner from north of Salem,
Mass., to figure the course, speed, altitude and approximate size of the
meteor.

Checking Bowditch's calculations, Robson said he found his predecessor
has put Judge Wheeler's position off by about 10 miles longitudinally.

There were other issues with compiling information on the meteor, Robson
said.

""In 1807, it was a different age," he said. "We can understand they
didn't have television, cars, electricity or airplanes, but it was
different from that, too."

For example, Robson said he cannot rely on the times written down by
observers of the meteorite without adjusting them because the
standardized system of time zones we use today was not even proposed
until the 1860s. What was 6:30 a.m. then, he said might be 6:55 a.m. by
modern reckoning.

"They had clocks that were very accurate, but they set them by the
sundial, by the noon mark," he said. "Each community had their own time."

In Rutland, Robson said he found Bowditch's estimates of where Page was
fairly close to the mark.

"The house had been moved three times, but he didn't need to know where
the house was now," Davidson said. "He needed to know the GPS
coordinates of William Page's yard in 1807. It was a different sort of
request from what we're used to. Usually people are researching their
family tree."

The spot where Page watched the explosion was the corner of East Center
and Main streets, Davidson said - where the Sycamore Inn stands today.

"The Sycamore Inn wasn't there," Davidson said. "His house was there.
His house was moved by his son to build the Sycamore Inn."

Robson said his next step is to try to track down the home of Mrs.
Gardner. Perhaps the answer will fall out of the sky.
Received on Mon 13 Aug 2007 02:20:27 PM PDT