File:Astronomy for amateurs (1904) (14597137610).jpg

Identifier: astronomyforamat00flam (find matches)
Title: Astronomy for amateurs
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: Flammarion, Camille, 1842-1925 Welby, Frances A. (Frances Alice) tr
Subjects: Astronomy
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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ht of fourteen miles, and was seen as far as435 miles from Madrid! In one of Raphaels finest pictures (The Madonna ofFoligno) a fire-ball may be seen beneath a rainbow(Fig. 58), the painter wishing to preserve the remem-brance of it, as it fell near Milan, on September 4, 1511.This picture dates from 1512. The dimensions of these meteorites vary consider-ably; they are of all sizes, from the impalpable dustthat floats in the air, to the enormous blocks exposed inthe Museum of Natural History in Paris. Many ofthem weigh several million pounds. That representedbelow fell in Mexico during the shower of meteors ofNovember 27, 1885. It weighed about four pounds. These bolides and uranoliths come to us from thedepths of space; but they do not appear to have the sameorigin as the shooting stars. They may arise fromworlds destroyed by explosion or shock, or even from 201 ASTRONOMY FOR AMATEURS planetary volcanoes. The lightest of them may havebeen expelled from the volcanoes of the Moon. Some
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Fig. 58.—Raphaels Fire-Bail (^The Madonna of Foligno).202 THE COMETS of the most massive, in which iron predominates, mayeven have issued from the bowels of the Earth, projectedinto space by some volcanic explosion, at an epoch whenour globe was perpetually convulsed by cataclysms ofextraordinary violence. They return to us to-day after

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