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]
20 July 1860 Great Meteor; believed by Olson to be the event referred to in Walt Whitman's poem Year of Meteors, 1859–60[3][4]
21 December 1876 Great Meteor; sighted over Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania[5]
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
Meteor shower – Celestial event caused by streams of meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere
Unidentified flying object – Airborne, submerged, and transmedium phenomena considered unusual and unidentified
References
^ a bFalk, Dan (1 June 2010). "Forensic astronomer solves Walt Whitman mystery: CultureLab (blog)". New Scientist. Archived from the original on 21 March 2016. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
^"Forensic astronomer solves Walt Whitman mystery". New Scientist. 1 June 2010. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
^"150-year-old meteor mystery solved". MSNBC. 2 June 2010. Archived from the original on 5 June 2010. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
^Herschel, Alexander Stewart (1878). "Observations of luminous meteors". Report of the forty-seventh meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science: Held at Plymouth in August 1877. John Murray. pp. 149–153.
