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An incessant rain of bolides falling on his surface compensates sufficiently for the heat that he is continually giving forth. It has been calculated " "Good Lord deliver us!" cried Ardan, putting his hands to his ears: "here comes Tyndall and Thomson again!"
The same cause which checks the diffusion of the solar light, diminishes the extinction of that which emanates either from bolides from Jupiter, or from the moon, seen on the second day after its conjunction. The 12th of November was an extremely hot day, and the hygrometer indicated a very considerable degree of dryness for those climates.
But since the direction of the bolides was not the same at Labrador and at Cumana, why were they not perceived in the latter place towards the north, as at Cayenne? We can scarcely be too cautious on a subject, on which good observations made in very distant places are still wanting. The highest do not appear to exceed thirty leagues.
These balls are sometimes called bolides. They are not really round in shape, although they often look so while traversing the sky, but their forms are fragmentary, and occasionally fantastic.
There was very little wind in the low regions of the atmosphere, and that little blew from the east. No trace of clouds was to be seen. M. Bonpland states that, from the first appearance of the phenomenon, there was not in the firmament a space equal in extent to three diameters of the moon, which was not filled every instant with bolides and falling stars.
Hundreds of bolides, catching fire from contact with the atmosphere, streaked the darkness with their luminous trails, overspreading it occasionally with sheets of electric flame.
Petit, the Director of the Observatory of Toulouse, who these last years has devoted much time and care to the observation of bolides, has calculated that the very one we have just encountered moves with such astonishing swiftness that it accomplishes its revolution around the Earth in about 3 hours and 20 minutes!" "Whew!" whistled Ardan, "where should we be now if it had struck us!"
Farther, if we admit the existence of particular aerial fluids in the inaccessible regions of luminous meteors, of falling-stars, bolides, and the Aurora Borealis; how can we conceive why the whole stratum of those fluids does not at once ignite, but that the gaseous emanations, like the clouds, occupy only limited spaces?
Unfortunately, none of them could recollect the direction of the meteors, or their apparent height. From the position of the mountains and thick forests which surround the Missions of the Cataracts and the little village of Maroa, I presume that the bolides were still visible at 20 degrees above the horizon.
Few pilots have ever, or will ever, see a deluxe model bolide but when they do they'll never forget it. It's like someone shooting a flare in front of your face. Enough of meteors and back to our experienced observers. The example of pilots and bolides holds true in many, many other cases. Take high flying jets for example.
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