Week 33: Perseids Meteor Shower, Han Dynasty Scribes, Henry David Thoreau

Fig. 1. W.F. Denning. “Positions of the Perseid Radiant Point, July 15, to August 20.” From “The Observed Motion and Duration of the Radiant Point of the Perseids.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (December 1901: 161-169). 168.

Waxing Crescent Moon - 14 Days to Full; 39 Days to Fall Equinox

Headnote#

At the risk of this becoming an extraterrestrial blog, I am continuing last week’s astronomical theme as we exit the peak of the Perseids meteor shower. Although it offers no liquid relief to the summer heat, this shower is a long debris trail with an equally long tale to tell.

Our dear little planet is peppered by Perseids around the same time every year, although the timing fluctuates slightly due to calendar mechanics and the wobbling of the Earth’s axis, gradually shifting later in the year at a rate of approximately 1.5 days per century. And the shower is replenished every 133 years, when the Swift-Tuttle comet again enters our inner solar system from the distant Kuiper Belt and crosses Earth’s orbit on the way to its perihelion (closest point to the sun). As it passes through our neighborhood, the 16-mile-wide comet sheds some of its frozen gases, rock and mineral debris, and carbon compounds, leaving a renewed debris trail for our planet to spin through.1 The comet’s last visit to the sun was in December 1992, and it won’t return again until July 2126 (nearly 100 years from today). In the meantime, though, in 2028, we will pass through an especially rich “filament” of dust shed by the comet in 1479, which is expected to amplify the annual shower into an outright meteor storm.

The first recorded observation of the Perseids shower was made in China nearly 2,000 years ago, in the extensive manuscript annals of the Han Dynasty (202 BCE to 220 CE), and was preserved for centuries through the region’s dedicated manuscript culture. This ancient observation was first compiled and translated for European audiences in 1841, as part of a French text presented below for your decoding pleasure. Yes, this took me a while to track down and verify, even with the help of a chatbot. But it was, I submit, worth it to encounter that ancient scribe’s evocative turns of phrase, transmitted to us across continents, millennia, and media forms.

Humans didn’t really figure out how meteor showers and shooting stars worked, including the regularity of their timing, until the nineteenth century. Prior to that, some Catholic cultures in Europe referred to the Perseids shower as the “tears of St. Lawrence”; the feast day of this martyred saint—who is supposed to have told the people burning him to death, “This side is cooked enough; turn me over and eat!,” thereby securing his spot as the patron saint of both cooks and comedians—falls on August 10th. It wasn’t until 1838 that New Haven bookseller (and future Yale librarian) Edward C. Herrick more fully connected the dots across several years and, eventually, much of recorded history. This was the era that recognized meteors as more than just transient atmospheric phenomena, unrequiring of further study; for example, amateur British astronomer W. F. Denning first documented, in detail, how the Perseids shower gradually moves across the sky as Earth passes through the comet debris.

Now, with those millennia of accumulated attention and eventual documentation behind us, humans in the twenty-first century can watch a state-sponsored live-stream of Perseids on Youtube and poetically chronicle “this vertiginous awareness / mocking gravity on our speck of now.” The infrastructure of our attention runs deep.

Fig. 2. W.F. Denning. “Horary number of Perseïds.” From “The August Perseïds, 1877.” The Observatory 1 (September 1877): 164-166.

---

Readings#

1. 36. Période Khien-wou, 12e année, 1re lune, jour ki-oueï (9 février), on vit de petites étoiles filantes au nombre d’un cent au plus : les unes allaient au N. O. d’autres allaient directement au N. et d’autres au N. E. Après deux nuits, ce phénomène cessa. — A la 6e lune , jour wou-yn (27 juin), au lever du jour, on vit une centaine de petites étoiles filantes allant vers les quatre points cardinaux; elles étaient semblables à un peuple nombreux qui émigre. A la 10e lune, jour ting-mao (14 octobre ou 13 décembre), on vit une grande étoile filante , très-lumineuse, qui partit de l’astérisme Tsing (μ, γ, ε, ζ, Gémeaux), se dirigea de l’orient à l’occident, et fit un grand bruit.

   
   [36. Xianwu period, 12th year, 1st month, jiwei day (February 9): about a hundred small shooting stars were seen; some moved toward the northwest, others directly north, and others toward the northeast. This phenomenon ceased after two nights. — In the 6th month, wuyin day (June 27), at daybreak, about a hundred small shooting stars were seen moving toward the four cardinal points; they resembled a vast migrating crowd. In the 10th month, dingmao day (October 14 or December 13), a large, very bright shooting star was seen; it originated from the Jing asterism (μ, γ, ε, ζ, Gemini), traveled from east to west, and produced a loud noise.]

Edouard Biot. Catalogue Général Des étoiles Filantes Et Des Autres Météores Observés En Chine Pendant Vingt-quatre Siècles. Paris: Impr. royale, 1841. 138. [Trans. courtesy of Google; emphasis added.]#

2. The poet must be continually watching the moods of his mind as the astronomer watches the aspects of the heavens. What might we not expect from a long life faithfully spent in this wise? The humblest observer would see some stars shoot. A faithful description as by a disinterested person of the thoughts which visited a certain mind in threescore years and ten, as when one reports the number and character of the vehicles which pass a particular point. As travellers go round the world and report natural objects and phenomena, so faithfully let another stay at home and report the phenomena of his own life — catalogue stars, those thoughts whose orbits are as rarely calculated as comets. It matters not whether they visit my mind or yours — whether the meteor falls in my field or in yours — only that it comes from heaven. (I am not concerned to express that kind of truth which Nature has expressed. Who knows but I may suggest some things to her? Time was when she was indebted to such suggestions from another quarter, as her present advancement shows. I deal with the truths that recommend themselves to me — please me — not those merely which any system has voted to accept.) A meteorological journal of the mind. You shall observe what occurs in your latitude, I in mine.

Henry David Thoreau. “August 19, 1851.” Journal, Vol. II: 1850 - September 15, 1851. Ed. Bradford Torrey. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1906. 403.#

Supplementum#

• Isabel Rogers. “Watching the Perseids.” Poetry (October 2016).

• Madison Mooney. “Raining Fire in the Sky - The Perseid Meteor Showers.” Lowell Observatory Blog (n.d.).

• Joe Rao. "[The Legend and Science Behind the Famous Meteor Shower](https://The Legend and Science Behind the Epic Meteor Shower)." Space (August 11, 2016).

• Edward C. Herrick. “Further proof of an annual Meteoric Shower in August, with remarks on Shooting Stars in general.” The American Journal of Science and Arts XXXIII (January 1838): 354-364.

• Mark Littman. “The Recognition of the Perseid Meteors.” Sky & Telescope (May 17, 2005).

Fig. 3. Perseid meteors photo collage (August 10-15, 2011). NASA/MSFC/Meteoroid Environment Office.

---

✦ From the Earthly Book of Hours ✦#

Finally fixed the "Wander the Hours" function so the page doesn't keep resetting!

Added a couple more readings and around a dozen images:

• Poems by H.D. and Helene Johnson

• Photographs by Edward Steichen, Berenice Abbott, Anne Brigman, and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

• Paintings by James McNeill Whistler, Gustave Caillebotte, Edgar Degas, Paul Cezanne, and Dwight William Tryon

• Drawings and prints/etchings by Odilon Redon, Alphonse Allais, J. Norman Lockyer, and Utagawa Hiroshige

Drafted the Sources page, with references and links for each image and reading included in the project

Next steps: final proofreading and cleanup to complete this “first edition”