Meteor procession

A meteor procession occurs when an Earth-grazing meteor breaks apart, and the fragments travel across the sky in the same path. According to physicist Donald Olson, only four occurrences are known:^[1]

• 18 August 1783 Great Meteor^[1][2] (Passed over Blair Atholl, the east coast of southern Scotland and England and the English Channel, breaking up over southern France or northern Italy).^[3]
• 20 July 1860 Great Meteor; sighted over North America, believed by Olson to be the event referred to in Walt Whitman's poem Year of Meteors, 1859–60^[4][5]
• 21 December 1876 Great Meteor; sighted over Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania^[6][7][8]
• 9 February 1913 Great Meteor Procession; a chain of slow, large meteors moving from northwest to southeast, sighted over North America, particularly in Canada, the North Atlantic and the Tropical South Atlantic

Oil painting by Frederic Edwin Church, The 1860 Great Meteor

See also

• 1972 Great Daylight Fireball – Atmospheric phenomenon
• Bolide – Extremely bright meteor
• Comet breakup – Natural object in space that releases gas
• Forensic astronomy – Study of past celestial appearances
• Green fireballs – Unidentified flying objects
• List of Earth-crossing asteroids
• Meteor shower – Celestial event caused by streams of meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere
• Unidentified flying object – Airborne entity that has not been identified or explained