The Meteor of 1860
Explanation:
Frederic
Church (1826-1900), American landscape painter
of the Hudson River School, painted what he saw in nature.
And on July 20th, 1860, he saw a spectacular string of
fireball meteors
cross the Catskill evening sky, an extremely
rare Earth-grazing meteor procession.
From New York City, poet
Walt
Whitman (1819-1892)
also wrote of the "... strange huge meteor procession,
dazzling and clear, shooting over our heads" in his poem
Year
of Meteors (1859-60).
But the inspiration for Whitman's words was forgotten.
His astronomical reference became a mystery,
the subject of scholarly debate
until
Texas State University physicists Donald Olson and Russell Doescher,
English professor Marilynn Olson, and
Honors Program student Ava Pope,
located reports documenting the date and timing of the
spectacular meteor procession.
The breakthrough was spotting the
connection with Church's relatively little-known painting.
Fittingly, the
forensic
astronomy team's work was just published, on the 150th anniversary of the
cosmic event that inspired both poet and painter.
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