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WE: shooting stars!



Giovanni Schiaparelli, who was born in 1835 and died in 1910, and Giovanni Pascoli, born in 1855 and died in 1912, have never met (for all we know so far ...) but their lives, for the most part, coincided. And the shooting stars, somehow "belong" to both: the first gave you the scientific explanation, the second told her in words that we all carry in our hearts.

BEFORE THE SCIENTIST ...

"But mostly it seems that the pieces detached from the core [of comets] are tiny and numerous, that it should be unraveling for example in the way that makes a piece of salt thrown on the fire, which results in sparks small and numerous. In this case, form along the road traveled by the nucleus of a kind of current or procession of corpuscles, which ends with time to fill in part or even all of the comet's orbit, moving along that. Many comets, if not all, have formed along their course like a train: Planetary and intervals are filled with these particles resulting from the wrecked part of comets. When the Earth in its annual round, crosses one of these processions, meets some of those particles, each of which, ignited by Earth's atmosphere, it burns and there is lost after a short time, forming what is called a shooting star.
Shooting stars are thus nothing but minute particles of celestial planetary bodies abandoned in space, and subsequently collected in the annual Earth from his lap. "

Giovanni Schiaparelli, the comet of 1882, 1883


AND THEN THE POET

San Lorenzo, I know why so much
of stars for the quiet air
burns and falls, because it is in great grief
concave sky sparkles.

A swallow was returning to its home:
killed him: he fell among the thorns ;
she had an insect in its beak:
dinner of its swallows.

Now is there, as the cross, which tends
that worm to the distant sky;
and her nest is in the shadows, waiting,
chirping ever slower.

Even a man returned to his nest:
killed him: he said: Forgiveness;
remained open eyes and a cry
carrying two dolls as a gift.

Now there, in the remote house, the
waiting, waiting in vain: he
motionless, astonished, points
the dolls to the distant sky.

You, Heaven, from the worlds
serene, infinite, immortal,
oh! tears of a flood of stars you
this atom, opaque Evil!

Giovanni Pascoli, X August, 1891

Good shooting stars and enjoy all Ferragosto Blog with us of this song !
To see the video of youtube, you must have Flash Player 10.

Credits & Copyright: Alex Tudor, the Romanian Society for Meteors and Astronomy
Faculty of Physics, Bucharest University - APOD September 11, 2008