An odd and still-unexplained parade of meteors on this date dazzled viewers in Canada, the northeastern United States and ships in the Atlantic all the way down to Brazil. The origin of the event called the Great Meteor Procession of 1913, after more than a century, is still unknown.

This procession of meteors was unlike other meteor showers, where zippy streaks of light all radiate outward from a single point. The February 9, 1913, meteors appeared to cross the sky in formation, on nearly identical paths. Their pace across the sky was stately and measured.

Today in science: February 9, 1913. An odd & unexplained parade of meteors on this date dazzled viewers in Canada, the US, & ships in the Atlantic all the way to Brazil. The event is usually known by the name the Great Meteor Procession of 1913, & its origins are still unknown. pic.twitter.com/86HdyEkKkD

— David Crook (@StellarInsights) February 9, 2021

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There was another difference between your average meteor and the 1913 procession. Normal meteors tend to plunge into Earth’s atmosphere and vaporize due to friction with the air. Meteors in annual showers last only seconds. The 1913 meteors appeared to travel almost horizontally, nearly parallel to the Earth’s surface, and thus they remained visible to a single observer for about a minute, and the entire procession took several minutes to pass by.

Plus, observers reported rumblings and other strange sounds, suggesting the 1913 meteors could have been relatively close to Earth when they disintegrated.

Some astronomers later concluded that – because all sightings of the meteor procession occurred along a great circle arc – the source had been a small, short-lived natural satellite of Earth – a temporary second moon. Other theories attempted to prove there was a radiant point for this shower, just as for any ordinary meteor shower.

The densely populated northeastern United States was cloudy on the evening of February 9, 1913. So 30 million potential observers were for the most part unaware of the phenomenon. A 1913 report in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada by Clarence Chant, who collected over 100 eyewitness reports of the event, described the scene like this:

A huge meteor appeared traveling from northwest by west to southeast, which, as it approached, was seen to be in two parts and looked like two bars of flaming material, one following the other. They were throwing out a constant stream of sparks and after they had passed they shot out balls of fire straight ahead that travelled more rapidly than the main bodies.

They seemed to pass over slowly and were in sight about five minutes. Immediately after their disappearance in the southeast a ball of clear fire, that looked like a big star, passed across the sky in their wake. This ball did not have a tail or show sparks of any kind. Instead of being yellow like the meteors, it was clear like a star.

The Great Meteor Procession of 1913
© RASC Archives Acknowledgement: Bradley E. SchaeferLSU
2013-02-09 pic.twitter.com/1q1b20k4JH

— Tomorrow Never Knows (@gche) March 4, 2022

Don Olson of Texas State University and Steve Hutcheon of the Astronomical Association of Queensland, Australia, have studied this phenomenon. Sifting through a vast array of archival material, the team discovered seven ship’s reports, all previously unknown, extending the established track of the procession by an additional thousand miles. They reported their results in a 2013 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine. Read more about Olson and Hutcheon’s findings here.

Meanwhile, the exact origin of the meteors in the 1913 meteor procession is still a mystery and may never be known for sure.

Bottom line: On February 9, 1913, lucky observers witnessed the Great Meteor Procession, when bright meteors soared horizontally across the sky for minutes at a time.

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