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Credit & Copyright:
by
Frederic Church
Courtesy: Judith Filenbaum Hernstadt (painting photographed by Gerald L. Carr)
Explanation:
Frederic
Church (1826-1900), American landscape painter
of the Hudson River School, painted what he saw in nature.
And on July 20th, 1860, he saw a spectacular string of
fireball meteors
cross the Catskill evening sky, an extremely
rare Earth-grazing meteor procession.
From New York City, poet
Walt
Whitman (1819-1892)
also wrote of the "... strange huge meteor procession,
dazzling and clear, shooting over our heads" in his poem
Year
of Meteors (1859-60).
But the inspiration for Whitman's words was forgotten.
His astronomical reference became a mystery,
the subject of scholarly debate
until
Texas State University physicists Donald Olson and Russell Doescher,
English professor Marilynn Olson, and
Honors Program student Ava Pope,
located reports documenting the date and timing of the
spectacular meteor procession.
The breakthrough was spotting the
connection with Church's relatively little-known painting.
Fittingly, the
forensic
astronomy team's work was just published, on the 150th anniversary of the
cosmic event that inspired both poet and painter.
Courtesy: Judith Filenbaum Hernstadt (painting photographed by Gerald L. Carr)
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NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: meteor
Publications with words: meteor
See also:
- APOD: 2025 August 25 Á The Meteor and the Star Cluster
- APOD: 2025 August 6 Á Meteor before Galaxy
- APOD: 2024 November 27 Á The Meteor and the Comet
- Meteor over the Bay of Naples
- Fireball over Iceland
- APOD: 2023 August 23 Á The Meteor and the Galaxy
- APOD: 2023 July 16 Á Meteor and Milky Way over the Alps