What happened
At about nine o'clock on the evening of 9 February 1913, people across Canada watched something no one had a word for. A long procession of perhaps 40 to 60 bright, slow-moving fireballs crossed the sky from horizon to horizon along almost the same path, in what one astronomer called perfect formation. Individual bodies stayed in view for half a minute or more, and the whole parade took about five minutes to pass. Observers described glowing double bars of fire throwing off sparks, smaller balls shooting ahead, and a clear, tail-less star-like body bringing up the rear. Houses and the ground shook at several Canadian stations and thunder-like rumbles were heard. The same procession was later reported from the north-eastern United States, Bermuda and ships far out in the Atlantic, giving a ground track of more than 11,000 kilometres. University of Toronto astronomer Clarence Chant gathered the reports later that year, and painter Gustav Hahn recorded the scene near Toronto's High Park.
The original account
A huge meteor appeared travelling from northwest by west to southeast, which, as it approached, was seen to be in two parts and looked like two bars of flaming material, one following the other. They were throwing out a constant stream of sparks and after they had passed they shot out balls of fire straight ahead that travelled more rapidly than the main bodies. They seemed to pass over slowly and were in sight about five minutes.
Observer at Appin, Ontario, quoted in C. A. Chant, 'An Extraordinary Meteoric Display', Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada vol. 7 (1913) (public domain)
The official explanation
Astronomers agree this was natural. Clarence Chant concluded that because every report lay along one great-circle arc and there was no radiant, the source was a small body or cluster that had been briefly captured into orbit around the Earth and was disintegrating as it grazed the upper atmosphere. Later analyses by William Pickering, Lincoln LaPaz and John O'Keefe broadly supported a temporary satellite; Pickering used the sound reports to estimate a height of about 56 kilometres. In 2013 Donald Olson and Steve Hutcheon found seven new ship reports, extending the known track to more than 7,000 miles.
The anomalous case
Even as an identified event, the procession has features that ufologists find suggestive. Witnesses saw dozens of luminous bodies travelling in formation, nearly level and slowly, for hundreds of miles, with a distinct, tail-less bright object following behind the main group, something many observers singled out as different in colour and behaviour. Researcher Alexander Mebane found reports suggesting a second procession on the same course about five hours later, which is hard to square with Earth's rotation, and Chant himself recorded three groups of 'dark objects' crossing Toronto on the same track the next afternoon. Some writers argue that these anomalies, and later 'meteor processions' tied to UFO reports, are treated too readily as a closed case. The event is also a vital calibration: it shows how real natural formations of fiery bodies look to many independent witnesses at once.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Sources
- 1913 Great Meteor Procession Wikipedia
- Forensic Astronomer Cracks the Case of Historic Meteor Procession Scientific American (Cocktail Party Physics blog)
Witness reports elsewhere
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