PHENOMENAL PHENOMENA
In recent years, Middle Georgians have been treated to a plethora of sky-watching, meteorological, or astronomical events. We have watched strong tropical storms, an ultra-rare hurricane, and associated tornadoes. Earlier this winter, a half-foot of snow blanketed our yards, fields, and forests. There have been two near-total solar eclipses and several total lunar eclipses, including the “blood-red” eclipse of February 2025. On any given evening, sky-watchers can see the International Space Station orbiting the Earth in excess of 17,000 miles per hour. Modern-day satellites fill the skies. To highlight the nighttime skies, were the two very rare appearances of the Aurora Borealis.
It was in the early 1830s, nearly two centuries ago, long before artificial satellites, unidentified flying objects excluded, circumnavigated the planet. Surviving accounts of these phenomenal phenomena are rare and based solely on human observation.
Sky observers in Charleston, South Carolina, noticed that the sun began to look white in color on Thursday, August 18, 1831. The next day, the white shade turned to blue. As the sun began to set on Friday evening, brilliant red rays of sunlight flared across the western skyline in Georgia. The fantastic display lasted well into the twilight sky. It was an otherwise unremarkable Saturday as the sun began to make its usual descent below the horizon. Around 5:00 o’clock, about two hours before the sun was to set.
A writer for the Georgia Journal and Messenger,l out of Macon, observed “the sun was perfectly blue, and so devoid of brilliancy.” The reporter, who reported that his vision was not impaired, wrote that it appeared as if the sun resembled a midnight full moon.
The amazed observer continued, “The sky was overcast, and in the North and East the clouds were of a slight indigo color.” As Sunday dawned, the blue hue continued as the sun grew increasingly brilliant. Over in Charleston, the noonday sun was compared to the recent total solar eclipse. As the Sunday sun approached the western horizon, a large black spot appeared in the southern sky. In Charleston, a sky gazer noticed that the sun was a deep aqua color. The observer concluded that the sun’s blue shade may have been caused by atmospheric conditions, but could not comprehend how such a large black spot appeared in the sky.
The writer checked his trusty Grier’s Almanac and found that a lunar eclipse was to occur three days later on August 23, but was only visible in Europe. A total annular solar eclipse had occurred six months earlier over North Georgia, eliminating any chance the blue sun was caused by an eclipse. It was thought that the easterly winds caused the normal hazy conditions, which could alter the appearance of the sun. However, virtually no haze was observed.
Known as the “Great Eclipse of 1831,” it arrived just as the Almanac had determined. What the folks at Grier’s didn’t consider was the eclipse was coupled with a “great now storm,” two Saturdays before February 12, 1831.
In the days leading up to November 13, 1833, the weather in Georgia had been somewhat mercurial. On a rather warm Saturday and part of Sunday, a steady rain fell. After a Monday morning fog evaporated, the skies cleared. As the sun began to set on Tuesday afternoon, temperatures began to plummet. Wednesday, like Tuesday, was a perfectly clear, crisp autumn day. As the Sun set, a thin crescent moon hung low in the sky. Once the moon disappeared below the western horizon, the pitch-black sky was speckled with its usual complement of stars and planets. All was normal, or so it seemed.
At about 9:00 that evening and continuing until the Sun came up the next morning, thousands and thousands of stars came screaming out of the calm, northeastern sky, appearing to emanate out of the constellation of Leo, the Lion, traveling at an estimated 156,000 miles per hour. Those who believed in a higher being were sure that Judgment Day was at hand. Few, if any, people realized what was really happening.
“The stars descended like snowfall to Earth,” an Augusta resident recalled. “We were awoken by a neighbor, who had been aroused in a similar manner by one who supposed the World was coming to an end, as the stars were falling. The whole heavens were lighted by falling meteors, as thick and constant as the flakes which usher in a snowstorm, ” a Georgia newspaper editor wrote.
In Milledgeville, the newspapers reported that hundreds and thousands of stars were shooting madly and vertically from their spheres with several second-long trails of whitish light behind them. Some thought that they must be fireworks instead of falling stars. A few observers swore that several of them had exploded.
Some Georgians thought the meteor shower had a more sinister political purpose than an astronomical phenomenon. A full-scale political war between George M. Troup, of Laurens County, and John Clarke had been raging for more than a dozen years. Troup had been narrowly defeated by Clarke in two elections in the early 1820s. Troup won a narrow victory of his own in 1823 and was narrowly reelected again in 1825 in the first popular vote gubernatorial election in Georgia history. On Friday, November 8, five days before the meteor shower, Troup tendered his written resignation from the United States Senate from his Valdosta home in eastern Laurens County. The first written accounts of the political icon’s leaving the Senate two years early circulated throughout the capital in Milledgeville on the 13th. Although Troup maintained that his resignation was for purely personal reasons, some of his more ardent supporters thought that the evening’s spectacle was a sign of retribution if Clark’s followers regained political power in the state.
The longest-lasting legacy of the greatest meteor shower in the history of the United States on that starry, starry falling night was the beginning of the concentrated study of meteors and the causes of meteor storms in particular.
In the last month of 1834, another remarkable solar eclipse occurred, moving from east to west across the center of Middle Georgia. The Weekly Columbus Enquirer reported that totality, which lasted a mere 108 seconds, was nonetheless spectacular when day turned into night just before two o’clock on the afternoon of November 30, 1834. Middle Georgia residents observed in wonder as the stars twinkled in the pitch-black middle of the day, birds roosted in the trees, and the roosters crowed for the second time that day.
Comments