by Brad Schaefer » Sat Feb 09, 2013 6:11 pm
Photography and astrophotography were active worldwide back in 1913, so maybe there are some pictures of the Great Meteor Procession hiding away somewhere? Recall the myriad of modern photos and videos of fireballs taken by random people (see links in the APOD caption) and the Harvard plates have much fainter meteor pictures going back to before 1900. So if we are lucky, maybe some photo of the Procession can be found by modern-day diligent searchers?
I have just returned from a month-long trip to Harvard College Observatory, where I was examining archival astronomical photographs (called plates) for novae and cataclysmic variable stars, getting light curves from 1889 onwards. They have ~500,000 plates, covering the whole sky, as recorded from stations in Massachusetts, Peru, South Africa and more, finely covering the sky to typically 14th mag from 1889-1954 plus a number of plates in the ~1968 to 1985 range. I examined *all* 69 plates exposed from -48 hours to +2 hours from the time of the Procession (starting at 9:05 EST 9 February 1913, which is 02:05 UT 10 February 1913, which is JD 2419808.586) by raster scanning with a loupe (with a factor of two overlap) looking for any object that was trailed (likely with a very long trail). The idea is to find either photos of the meteors themselves or of the parent body (or fragments) while still outside the atmosphere. I have also made a full raster scan of all 48 plates taken from 30 October 1912 to 8 February 1913 that shows the region of the sky with 10h<RA<19h and -55°<DEC<+40°, all in an attempt to spot the incoming body (whether asteroid or comet) as a moderately trailed source perhaps with a coma. The human eye is very good at this sort of pattern recognition, I have an extreme familiarity with the Harvard plates, and I have much experience at similar scans of plates (for other questions). I have found nothing of any note or interest on these plates. This negative result is a shame, and it is also largely useless for any of the questions at hand. Nevertheless, it does show that there are untapped archives out there that are just waiting to be checked.
I am thinking that people can come up with other archives or repositories to check. For example, the Yerkes Observatory has a large archive of astronomical photos from the time, and they are not too far from the Procession path. So this is a challenge for people to go out and find photos of the Procession.
Photography and astrophotography were active worldwide back in 1913, so maybe there are some pictures of the Great Meteor Procession hiding away somewhere? Recall the myriad of modern photos and videos of fireballs taken by random people (see links in the APOD caption) and the Harvard plates have much fainter meteor pictures going back to before 1900. So if we are lucky, maybe some photo of the Procession can be found by modern-day diligent searchers?
I have just returned from a month-long trip to Harvard College Observatory, where I was examining archival astronomical photographs (called plates) for novae and cataclysmic variable stars, getting light curves from 1889 onwards. They have ~500,000 plates, covering the whole sky, as recorded from stations in Massachusetts, Peru, South Africa and more, finely covering the sky to typically 14th mag from 1889-1954 plus a number of plates in the ~1968 to 1985 range. I examined *all* 69 plates exposed from -48 hours to +2 hours from the time of the Procession (starting at 9:05 EST 9 February 1913, which is 02:05 UT 10 February 1913, which is JD 2419808.586) by raster scanning with a loupe (with a factor of two overlap) looking for any object that was trailed (likely with a very long trail). The idea is to find either photos of the meteors themselves or of the parent body (or fragments) while still outside the atmosphere. I have also made a full raster scan of all 48 plates taken from 30 October 1912 to 8 February 1913 that shows the region of the sky with 10h<RA<19h and -55°<DEC<+40°, all in an attempt to spot the incoming body (whether asteroid or comet) as a moderately trailed source perhaps with a coma. The human eye is very good at this sort of pattern recognition, I have an extreme familiarity with the Harvard plates, and I have much experience at similar scans of plates (for other questions). I have found nothing of any note or interest on these plates. This negative result is a shame, and it is also largely useless for any of the questions at hand. Nevertheless, it does show that there are untapped archives out there that are just waiting to be checked.
I am thinking that people can come up with other archives or repositories to check. For example, the Yerkes Observatory has a large archive of astronomical photos from the time, and they are not too far from the Procession path. So this is a challenge for people to go out and find photos of the Procession.