Mindy: "I finally fixed that annoying noise in my car."
Missy: "Really? How did you do it?'
Mindy: "I opened the door and pushed him out."
Leonid MeteorsIn 1833, the great shower of the Leonid Meteors was recorded. Many observers clearly reported that the meteors seemed to radiate from a spot in Leo and that, as the constellation moved slowly westward during the night, the radiant point moved with it. Within weeks a Yale mathematician, Denison Olmsted, showed that this radiant point was simply an effect of perspective. The millions of meteors that fell that night had in fact been moving along parallel paths. They appeared to diverge from a point in Leo for the same reason that parallel lines on the ground (such as railroad tracks), appear to diverge from a point on the horizon. Following this realization, the meteors were given the Latin family name for their apparent place of origin: the Leonids [Image: Photo of the Leonids in 1966.] |
