Plate XII, The November Meteors. As observed between midnight and 5 o’clock A.M. on the night of November 13-14, 1868.

From The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings.

tienne Lopold Trouvelot
New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1882
Chromolithograph
From the Special Collections of the University of Michigan Shapiro Science Library

While contemplating the heavens on a clear moonless night, we occasionally witness the sudden blazing forth of a star-like meteor, which glides swiftly and silently across some of the constellations, and as suddenly disappears, leaving sometimes along its track a phosphorescent trail, which remains visible for a while and gradually vanishes. These strange apparitions of the night are called Falling or Shooting-stars.

Although Plate XII. is intended to represent all the characteristics exhibited by the meteors observed on that night, every form represented having been obtained by direct observation, yet the number is much greater than it was at any single moment during the particular shower of 1868. As regards number, the intention was to give an idea of a great meteoric shower, such as that of 1833, for instance. Although many of the falling stars seem to be close to the Earth’s surface, yet this is only an effect of perspective due to their great distance, very few of these meteors ever coming into the lower regions of our atmosphere at all.

The phenomena exhibited during other great meteoric showers have been similar to those presented by the shower just described, the only differences consisting in variations of size and brightness in the meteors, and also in the trails, which sometimes are not so numerous as they were in 1868.¹

¹ Trouvelot 115-119.