How many ways are there to undo poor creatures! No speck so troublesome as self. He felt the same depression that he had felt as he went to sleep a century ago. And though he knew it would only make his depression worse, he immediately scanned backward as his ship decelerated, hunting for the star that had been the Sun. He could not find it. Which meant that even with the accelerated and decelerated time, the light from the nova—or supernova—had not yet reached the system he was headed for.

On 14 September 2014, around 11pm, a bight ball of light was seen heading toward Earth. The fireball was seen in Washington, D.C, the Northeast, and Midwest, and some people even saw the fireball in New York, New York, USA, and some report seeing five meteors fall before the fireball lite up the night sky. It is hard to believe that many people have never seen a falling star, or meteor. This is incredible because with the merest care and perseverance, one clear, dark night of observing will result in seeing not one, but many, even dozens of, meteors on some special nights.

For example, around August 11, observers under ideal conditions will catch the flash of 50 to 100 meteors an hour. This event is called the Perseid meteor shower, known to Europeans as the Tears of St. Lawrence. And, as we shall see, there are at least two other periods of the year—January and December—that offer activity on the same order magnitude. Rarer and much more remarkable, through, are so-called meteor storms, when as many as 10,000 to 20,000 meteors fall every hour. One of such storm has been predicted to occur near the end of the century. These storms are a phenomenon that truly captures public attention. Their charm is enhanced by the fact that comets, meteors, and stars are bright and look pretty, but have caused fires, major damage to buildings and houses.

In 36 A.D., we find the first reference to the Perseid meteor shower, more than 100 meteors were seen darting about in the morning hours. The first mention of the Eta Aquarid meteors dates to the year 466, countless meteors, great and small, appeared toward the West. In records from the year 585, a reference to the Orionids is found: hundreds of meteors scattered in every direction; in the year 687, the Lyrids report: starts feel like rain from the sky; and in 1002, the Leonids report a lot of little stars fell. In the Arab chronicles, in mid-October of the year 902, an infinite number of stars was seen during the night, scattering like rain right and left, and that came to be known as the year of the stars. The stars flew like a swarm of grasshoppers.

And on 12 November 1799, a planter in South Carolina awoke to the desperate cries of slaves on his and two nearby plantations. He heard a voice calling him to come out and yelling, “Oh my God, the World is in flames!” Dashing outside, he did not know whether to be more amazed by the celestial performances or by the crowd facedown on the ground imploring God to save them and the World. Another eye witness, Strickland, reported that two fireballs were half as bright as the moon, and that several hundred of these gorgeous stars were visible at once…leaving a long steak of flame in their tracks. In 1861, American astronomer Daniel Kirkwood suggested the currently accepted explanation for the origin of meteor showers—residue of particles of material (now known as meteoroid streams) from old comets, distributed along their orbits. Our souls are not our own. We covey a property in them to those with whom we associate; but to what extent can never been known, until we feel the tug, the agony, or our abortive effort to resume an exclusive sway over ourselves.