meteor procession

{{Short description|Meteor that breaks apart into fragments travelling in the same direction}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2023}}

File:Frederic Church Meteor of 1860.jpg, The 1860 Great Meteor]]

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:{{cite magazine |last=Falk |first=Dan |url= https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/06/the-forensic-astronomer-donald-olson.php |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20160321111745/https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/06/the-forensic-astronomer-donald-olson.php |archive-date=21 March 2016 |title=Forensic astronomer solves Walt Whitman mystery: CultureLab (blog) |magazine=New Scientist |date=1 June 2010 |access-date=8 February 2023}}

• 18 August 1783 Great Meteor{{cite journal |url= https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1914JRASC...8..221. |title=Notes and Queries |journal=Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada |volume=8 |pages=221–222 |date=June 1914 |bibcode=1914JRASC...8..221. |access-date=8 February 2023}}
• 20 July 1860 Great Meteor; believed by Olson to be the event referred to in Walt Whitman's poem Year of Meteors, 1859–60{{cite magazine |url= https://www.newscientist.com/gallery/whitman-mystery-solved/ |magazine=New Scientist

|title=Forensic astronomer solves Walt Whitman mystery |date=1 June 2010 |access-date=8 February 2023}}{{cite web |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20100605014144/http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/06/02/4448882-150-year-old-meteor-mystery-solved |title=150-year-old meteor mystery solved |publisher=MSNBC |date=2 June 2010 |archive-date=5 June 2010 |access-date=8 February 2023 |url= http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/06/02/4448882-150-year-old-meteor-mystery-solved}}

• 21 December 1876 Great Meteor; sighted over Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania{{cite book| title=Report of the forty-seventh meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science: Held at Plymouth in August 1877 |pages=149–153 |publisher=John Murray |year=1878 |chapter=Observations of luminous meteors |last1=Herschel |first1=Alexander Stewart |author-link1=Alexander Stewart Herschel

|chapter-url= https://archive.org/stream/reportannualmee05sciegoog#page/n256/mode/2up}}

• 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