ASTRONOMICAL NOTES FOR JANUARY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3084, 5 January 1909, Page 3

ASTRONOMICAL NOTES FOR JANUARY.

(By the Rev. P. W. Fairclough,

F.R.A.S.)

Astronomically speaking, our year starts from nowhere. New Year is neither the longest nor the shortest day, nor is it an equinox. It is supposed to be the beginning of a new year of the Christian era, but, with flagrant inconsistency, we celebrate the opening of that era a week before new year. The year is the time taken by the earth to complete a journey round the sun. This has been very exactly measured by taking long periods and dividing them by the number of years. The year proves not to be an exact number of rotation periods, but has a troublesome traction of a rotation—36s days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 49 seconds and 7-10 th of a second. If this fraction were exactly a quarter of a day, the calendar would be perfectly corrected by leap year, or by adding one whole day every four years. As it is, leap year adds 11 minutes, 10 seconds and 3 tenths too much. In a century this error amounts to 18hr 37min lOsec, or more than three-quarters of a day. If this were continued the calendar would, in four centuries, be more than three days ahead of the sun. 1 The error was once neglected for 1,250 years, and the spring equinox fell on March 11th instead of March 21st. In order to bring the calendar into step with Nature, Pope Gregory, in 1582, decreed the dropping of ten days. October sth was to be counted as October 15th, and henceforward, I instead of counting the last year of each century a leap year only every fourth century was to end with a leap year—namely, the centuries that divide by four. Thus, 1600 was a leap year, and 2000 will be another. This leaves only an error of 37rmn lOsec per century. Of course good Protestants of the specious times of Queen Elizabeth would not accept the dictation o± the Pope. They, therefore, kept up the "Old Style" till the error amounted to eleven days. In 1752 Parliament ordained that September 3rd was tc be reckoned September 14th. In Russia they still keep to the "Old Style," and are twelve days out. When a Russian writes to England he Jias to date his letter "25th May-6th Ju«s,"- the former being the Russian date ' , i, About the middle of November people in various parts of Taranaki were reported to have heard an unaccountable roaring noise. Some days afterwards earth was found newly ploughed and torn up on Mr C. Hawken's farm at Mokoia, a few miles south of Hawera. In the torn soil a meteorite was found, shattered by the impact. Meteorites, or at leist the cores of them, reach the earth, either whole or in fragments. A mass of iron weighing 30 tons is the largest known. It's in South America. Mexico has one of 19 tons, and Australia has supplied one to the British Museum of over three tons. What is the origin of meteors? All sorts of volcanic sources have been suggested. Volcanoes on the moon, ancient volcanoes on the earth, eruptions in the giant planets, solar eruption, and so forth, have all been laid under tribute. it is all very well to tahc vagaely of such things, but the question arises. "Can any sun or, planet expel a portion of its own mass with such a velucity that it will, not fall back?" The earth, for example, would have to expel a charge at seven miles a second if there were no atmosphere, but with very much higher velocity with the atmosphere. Was it ever possible for the earth lo do this? We doubt it. When bhe had no rigid crust there was no barrel to the gun to confine the eruptive energy behind a particular shot. Now that she has a barrel to the gun, she lacks powder. Are meteorites, then, the chips of creation, the unused patches of ne- , bula that condensed on their own i account. Waifs and strays that have at last been arrested? Their velocities are those of foreign visitors, but they do not suggest being odds and ends of the genuine raw material of the universe. They suggest having been part of a greater whole. Indeed, some of them are soaked full of imprisoned .gassee, which they could only have absorbed under tremendous pressure, j In short, meteorites are not crude ore, but scrap iron.