Shooting star

“ CHAPTER XXI METEORS OR SHOOTING STARS Any one who happens to gaze at the sky for a short time on a clear night is pretty certain to be rewarded with a view of what is popularly known as a "shooting star." Such an object, however, is not a star at all, but has received its appellation from an analogy; for the phenomenon gives to the inexperienced in these matters an impression as if one of the many points of light, which glitter in the vaulted heaven, had suddenly become loosened from its place, and was falling towards the earth. ”

“ Shooting-Stars.—On watching the heavens any clear night, we frequently see an appearance as of a star shooting rapidly through a short space in the sky, and then suddenly disappearing. Three or four such shooting-stars may, on the average, be observed in the course of an hour. They are usually seen only a second or two; but they sometimes move slowly, and are visible much longer. These stars begin to be visible at an average height of about seventy-five miles, and they disappear at an average height of about fifty miles. ”

“ All of us have seen shooting stars, and they are indeed something probably as old as this world, and have left their record in mythology as well as in history. According to Moslem tradition, the evil genii are accustomed to fly at night up to the confines of heaven in order to overhear the conversation of the angels, and the shooting stars are the fiery arrows hurled by the latter at their lurking foes, with so good an aim that we are told that for every falling star we may be sure that there is one spirit of evil the less in the world. ”

“ Or suppose that a shooting star determined to make the circuit of the earth, it might, so far as pace is concerned, go entirely around the globe and back to the point from which it started in a little more than twenty minutes. But the fact is, you could not make any object down287 here move as fast as a shooting star. No gunpowder that could be made would be strong enough, in the first place, and even if the body could once receive the speed, it would never be able to force its way through the air uninjured. ”

“ The moon was brightly shining in a clear sky, but the star shells shooting in the air and exploding with a constantly increasing rapidity, the blaze of artificial light quickly obtained ascendency over the mistress of the night; and the shrapnel shells, throwing their contents of danger in all directions, together with the hissing and roaring of all the other exploding missiles of death, formed a diapason of sound that makes one of those wonder-moments that come so seldom in a lifetime. ”

“ Ellis and I was playing pitch that night, and old Shooting-star had the bunch uh magazines, going through them methodical and serious. Shooting-star swallows everything he sees in print, like them writer sharps didn’t know enough to lie. ”

“ While true stars are immense bodies at an enormous distance, Shooting Stars are very small, perhaps not larger than a paving stone, and are not visible until they come within the limits of our atmosphere, by the friction with which they are set on fire and dissipated. ”

“ In fact, we must multiply the number expressing the relative speed by itself—that is, we must form its square—if we want to find an accurate measure for the quantity of heat which friction is able to produce when a rapidly moving body is being stopped by its aid. The shooting star may have a pace 100 times that of the rifle-bullet, and if we multiply 100 by 100 we get 10,000; consequently we see that the heat produced by the shooting star before its motion was arrested in dashing through the air would be 10,000 times that gained by the rifle-bullet in its flight. ”

“ It is not really one of the regular stars that has darted from its place. The objects we are now talking of are quite different from stars proper. To begin with, the shooting stars are comparatively close to us when we see them, and they are very small, whereas the stars themselves are enormous globes, far bigger than our earth, or often even bigger than the sun. Sometimes a great shooting star is seen which makes a tremendous blaze of light as bright as the moon, or even brighter still. These objects we call meteors, and you will be very fortunate if you can ever see a really285 fine one. ”

“ Those who hold this view urge that a shower of shooting- stars is merely the aggregation on a grand scale of the isolated or sporadic shooting- stars which are always more or less to be seen, and they affirm that between these occasional shooting stars and the mightiest fire-ball there is a perfect continuity, exhibited by the fact that shooting-stars of every gradation of lustre are from time to time observed. ”

“ There is an immense variety in the brilliancy of the shooting stars, from the weak telescopic sparks that vanish like a flash of lightning, to the incandescent bolides or fire-balls that explode in the atmosphere. ”

“ The usual weapons are pistols; sometimes a hunting-rifle or a shotgun."
I asked the same question when I cross-examined the ballistics witness.
"Is this the usual type of weapon used in your New Texas political liquidations?"
"No, not at all. That's a very expensive weapon, Mr. Ambassador. Wasn't even manufactured on this planet; made by the z'Srauff star-cluster. A weapon like that sells for five, six hundred pesos. It's used for shooting really big game—supermastodon, and things like that. And, of course, for combat." ”

“ There is a more credible theory on this subject, that shooting-stars are not a rush of ærial fire which is put out as soon as it is kindled, nor yet a blaze caused by a quantity of air being suddenly allowed to rush upwards, but that they are heavenly bodies, which from some failure in their rotatory power, fall from their orbit and descend, not often into inhabited portions of the earth, but for the most part into the sea, whereby they escape notice. ”

“ When they see one shooting through the air they take it as a sign that an enemy is near, and accordingly they shout and make as much noise as they can; next morning they all go out in the direction in which the star fell and look for the tracks of their foe.116 The Turrbal tribe of Queensland thought that a falling star was a medicine-man flying through the air and dropping his fire-stick to kill somebody ”

“ Here, then, a bit of abstract reasoning has apprized us of a most interesting family fact; to wit, that the great majority of shooting-stars are travelling in the same orderly sense as ourselves. Furthermore, as some must be moving in smaller orbits than the mean, others must be journeying in greater; or, in other words, shooting-stars are scattered throughout the system. ”

“ Their average velocity, relatively to the earth's surface, varies from ten to forty-five miles a second.
The average number of shooting-stars visible to the naked eye at any one place is estimated at about a thousand an hour; and the average number large enough to be visible to the naked eye, that traverse the atmosphere daily, is estimated at over eight millions. The number of telescopic shooting-stars would of course be much greater.
Occasionally, shooting-stars leave behind them a trail of light which lasts for several seconds. These trails are sometimes straight, as shown in Fig. ”

“ The sky quivers and reflects the flash of the great guns, as with the constant vibration of heat lightning. Flares and Verey lights of greenish yellow and white turn the night into ghastly day, and like the lurid flames of an inferno light up the battlefield, while the rifles crackle in the glare. Here a parachute-light like a great star hangs suspended almost motionless above us, lighting up the whole battlefield, and now a burning farmhouse or exploding ammunition dump illuminates the sky as from some vast subterranean furnace flung open upon the heavens. ”

“ March and shoot, shoot and march! The enemy’s shot rain hard; our bullets fly windward. The battle has become fierce.
Until we have pierced the body of the foe with our shot, we must continue to harass them with our fire. The bayonet is the finishing touch; the guns must play a large part in a battle. So, therefore, we must be very careful in shooting. When the fighting once begins, we begin to dance from the top of the head to the tip of the toe, we lose ourselves in excitement, but that does not do. ”

“ It is not often that a real born shot is met with—they are about as scarce as true poets and true painters. When one does meet with him one soon knows him, if there is any shooting going on. Perhaps he is at his first shooting match. He does not know himself as a “shootist,” possibly. Curiosity alone, it may be, prompts him to try a shot, so he takes the gun, and wholly without study or previous experience, blazes away, and, to the astonishment of all present, shoots almost to perfection. ”

“ The most spectacular part of the shooting is with the smallest and biggest guns. The small guns are shot at night. Great black targets with white centres are put up, and then your own ship, or possibly another anchored near, illuminates the targets with four or five great searchlights. The guns boom, and soon a little curlicue of light is seen curving through the air. It is what is called a tracer, a chemical set on fire by the redhot projectile as it flies. You see it hit the target, and then under the lights you see a splash. ”

“ But if I can find a mirror that will turn back all rays, a wall from which all projectiles will rebound, a shield against all the many forces of Nature and of man—then, Monsieur, I have the perfect defense and the perfect weapon!
"See this little mirror in my hand. I flash in your eyes a beam of light—so. You are blinded, no? And if this is not light, but a ray of death that you have hurled against my mirror, it kills you—is it not so? If it is a bullet that you shoot at me, it recoils and strikes you down. If it is a bomb, it is thrown back into your trenches, to kill your men. ”

“ Popping at them with any kind of a rifle would be like trying to hit a flying bird with a spitball. Look, Jeanne, top speed on the run from Mars to Terra at major opposition is up among the thousands of miles per second at the turnover. A meteor itself may be blatting along at fifty miles per second. Now a rifle, shooting a projectile at a few thousand feet per second would be useless. You'd have the meteor in your lap and out of the other side while the projectile is making up its mind to move forward and relieve the pressure that is building up behind it due to the exploding powder. ”

“ Our telescopic sights magnify about 31⁄2 and one can often make a successful shot by shooting six inches or a foot left or right, or above or below a white stone or some prominent object in the opposing parapet, even when you cannot define the Hun’s head very clearly through the sight. ”

“ The fusillade had burst out from the enemy's trenches more violently than ever the moment the wan, pale light of the star irradiated the earth. Now the darkness has again descended, the firing does not decrease. Rather the whistling of bullets increases. Other star shells rise and burst; on each occasion I see the rank of my men, one pressing against the other, necks extended, watching closely the course of the star. ”

“ Hideous night, pierced with flame, serried with a rocket's gleaming train, weird with bursting bombs [159] that light the glistening fields a grayish green; awful night, shaking to the booming of heavy guns, blotched with the red of splitting shells, quivering insanely to a machine gun's steady beat; night of death, with the wounded turning white, waiting for the hours just before the dawn when the firing stops and their comrades may be spared to carry them back; with the field of the soaked dead, a nightmare of lumpy things, seen hellishly in the rocket's glow. ”

“ So the largest and wildest shots of our world are but in one direction and with a defined trajectory: the gunner cannot go beyond his shot, and his shot so often falls short; the astronomer cannot go beyond his telescope and his telescope goes such a little way. All these are like men who have stood on the high peak of a mountain and seen the horizon like a single ring and who then descend down different paths towards different towns, traveling slow or fast. ”

“ The flashes of the guns, the dazzling brilliancy of the star shells, the long lines of varicolored signals as they went up from many camps and out-posts, and the flares dropped from scores of planes, passing and repassing in the darkness overhead, can never be forgotten. ”

“ For years means have been sought to make successful shooting at night possible. White and phosphorescent paints have been applied to the sights and to the top of the barrel but all such methods have proved more or less unsatisfactory even in dim light and in total darkness the target or other object cannot be seen. ”

“ Rockets rise above the hills, and fall slowly bathing the horizon in silvery rays. The lightning of the guns flashes furtively, like a winking eye. In spite of all this, in spite of war, the night is like waters dark and divine. ”

“ A flying rifle-shot from a lightning express at a distant swallow would have more chance of success. If you missed the mark, the projectile would wheel round the planet, and either become its satellite or return towards the earth like that of Jules Verne in his fascinating romance. ”

“ To learn the science of accurate shooting by constant practice in a gallery especially prepared for that purpose, the target being inanimate and incapable of retaliation, may, and often does, result in aptitude with the revolver and the rifle. To preserve this cleverness, however, the conditions must always be the same. The proper light must fall correctly upon the target; nothing to disturb the serenity of the surroundings or to distract the attention of the shooter must be permitted.
A grade higher comes the hunter. His targets are living, breathing objects. ”