#24Q - 70th Anniversary of a Meteorite Bruising (An Astronomical Travel Article) - More Astronomical Travel Stories - Mini-Eclipse + Saturn Occultation
TGT 9/16/24: The 70th Anniversary of the Hodges Meteor Fall; Index to More Astronomical Travel Stories; The Evening Sky Gets More Planets; The Mini-Eclipse of the Year; Saturn Covered Over
Cover Photo - Cosmic Bruise
In This Issue:
Cover Photo — Cosmic Bruise
Welcome to Issue 24Q!
Sky Planning Calendar —
* Moon-Gazing - The Moon Covers Saturn, Passes Jupiter and Mars* Observing—Plan-et - Three or Four Evening Planets
* Border Crossings - Virgo, the Longest Zodiacal Constellation
* A Lunar Mini-Eclipse On The 17th (With a Correction)* For the Future - Another Eclipse, an Almost Eclipse, and an October Comet
Astronomical Travel - 70th Anniversary of a Meteorite Bruising, Part 1
Welcome to The Galactic Times Newsletter-Inbox Magazine #24Q!
I’d like to say I had a vacation, but it has been a LOT of road trips instead. For research, to do book talks, and to do site research on a major meteor historical event that I had long heard about but never knew was so close to where I am.
This issue contains Part 1 of 2 on the story of Ann Elizabeth Hodges, who was not feeling well one day in November 1954 and decided to try to take a nap. She woke up in more pain, unexpectedly, with a bruise that became world famous, as she reluctantly did, too. The only documented case of a person hit by a meteor, and also to survive it. Part 1 describes the event, and the sites that are in existence today.
In any case, as you now warily watch the sky for a meteor with your name on it (this rock didn’t come from a predictable shower), you can watch the population of evening planets increase to four, if you count Venus in the evening twilight glow. A mini-eclipse—less than 10% of the Moon gets into the Earth’s umbral center/dark shadow—takes place right after this issue comes out. And there are some interesting For the Future events to tell you about.
Happy Equinox, wherever you are….
Publisher — Dr. Larry Krumenaker Email: newsletter@thegalactictimes.com
Sky Planning Calendar
Moon-Gazing
Moon passages by a star, planet or deep sky object are a good way to find a planet or other object if you’ve never located it before.
September 16 Saturn is not only 0.3-degrees South of the Moon, but in Australia, Hawaii, and central western North America, it gets behind the Moon. Taking place at 4:10-5:05 AM for Los Angeles, it is about 4 hours earlier in Hawaii. It isn’t visibly occulted any points east of the Pacific Coast.
September 17 Full Moon. And a mini-eclipse. See below, with a time correction to the last issue.
September 18 It is Perigee Day, the day the Moon is at its nearest distance from the Earth, and thus largest in size—a one-day-past-Full Super-Moon!
September 22 The Moon passes 0.2-degrees (less than half its diameter) North of the Pleiades. It is likely some outer cluster stars will be occulted.
September 23 Jupiter is 6-degrees distant from the Moon, during daytime. You’ll find the Moon a few degrees east of it in dark skies that evening.
September 24 Last Quarter
September 25 Mars is 5-degrees South of the Moon in the dawn sky.
Observing---Plan-et
==Saturn Gets Prominently Covered Up==
Mercury is barely visible in the dawn twilight, and is too far gone into the solar glare after the 22nd.
Venus is getting easier to view, setting near the End of Twilight in the evenings at month end. On the 18th, get a last glimpse of the star Spica, directly under Venus.
Earth reaches its equinox date for both hemispheres, on the 22nd at 7:44 AM Central Daylight Time.
The Moon passes Mars on the 25th, three days before it officially becomes an evening planet. After the 28th, when it rises before midnight Daylight Savings Time, that will make three of the five traditional “wandering stars” in the dark evening skies, four if you count Venus during twilight.
Jupiter rises around 2 hours after evening twilight ends. The Moon passes by during daylight hours on the 23rd.
Saturn earlier this month reached opposition, 180-degrees opposite the Sun in the sky, rising as the Sun sets and vice versa, staying visible ALL night and in both twilight periods, until the 25th, when it sets at the time of the start of morning twilight.
Border Crossings
Astronomically the Sun enters Virgo on the 16th, and remains there for 45 days, the longest period of time the Sun is in any zodiacal constellation. Astrologically, it is in Virgo, too!!—for six days, when it supposedly enters Libra (sigh).
A Lunar Mini-Eclipse on the 17th (With A Correction)
There is an upcoming partial lunar eclipse on September 17th North American dating. It is not a very exciting one but it makes an interesting challenge! The Moon will only barely enter the central umbral shadow, about 10% of the way into it (3-minutes of arc—barely a size the average human eye can differentiate), something that will barely look darker than the deepest part of the outer penumbral shadow. Partial phase will last ONE HOUR and 4 minutes of time. [Last issue the “1 hour” failed to stick in the typing, much apologies.] It is still a mini-eclipse, if not in time then in umbral depth.
The peak, such as it is, will be centered at 10:44PM Eastern Daylight Time, and the eclipse will be visible, weather permitting, from the longitudes of the Mediterranean Sea to California’s.
For the Future
Interestingly, there are one Solar and one Almost-Lunar Eclipses next month, October. The Moon JUST misses the penumbra on October 2nd, so nothing to see but it is out of the shadow by as much as the September eclipse is in it.
Then there is an annular eclipse, October 17, mostly visible at sea in the Pacific, and across Chile and Argentina. Partial phases (slight) will be visible in lower Baja California, Mexico, and northern New Zealand and the East Indies islands north of that. A fairly large percentage of partial phase will be visible from the Hawaiian Islands so if you needed an excuse to visit Oahu or Maui, here it is…..
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There is also a possible comet appearance in October. For two weeks, starting October 13th, the Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS *may* be visible in the western early evening sky. More details in the next issue.
Astronomical Travel
70th Anniversary of a Meteorite Bruising
With its muggy and often cloudy skies, Alabama isn’t known for much astronomical value. But it has two historical astronomical happenings to its credit: the Wetumpka Crater, the only one east of Texas and south of Tennessee, and the only known case in modern times of a person getting hit by a meteorite….and also surviving the experience.
The 70th anniversary of the latter event will be this upcoming Thanksgiving weekend (surviving a meteorite hit is a good reason to give thanks….), November 30th.
But this travel story is more about investigating today’s status of the site and participants. Has it been memorialized? Is it even remembered? And, what has happened in the intervening 70 years to the people, places, and things in this event—the woman who was struck, the radio that took the brunt of the hit, the site of the fall, and The Rock itself. And a few other items….
The Scene
Sylacauga is a town of just over 12, 000 people, roughly halfway between Auburn/Opelika and Birmingham, AL. The town was first settled by Americans in the 1830’s mostly after the Creeks were removed to the West.
What made the town prosperous was the discovery of the whitest marble in the USA. Much later, the Avondale Mills opened up in the city, employing about a quarter of the town, and in a rare set of progressive values, provided affordable homes, built schools, and other buildings, paid a higher than livable wage and did not discriminate against Blacks in its hiring. The Mills profited well into the 1950s, at least before economics and fires ended the business for good in 2006.
One person of common fame came out of Sylacauga in more recent times. The actor and singer Jim Nabors (Gomer Pyle) was born and raised here.
The Event
There are apocryphal tales of rocks from the sky hitting people in ancient Greece, China, Japan, and Korea. While some of the stories ring true, there is no evidence to back them up, nor remaining samples to be handled. In fact, in Western science, it was a dubious assertion that rocks ‘came from the heavens’ until sometime in the early to mid-1800s. Then, it was more certain that they could when the first meteor shower’s orbit was found to match that of a comet’s. Since that discovery, there had been no known person hit by a meteor on its way to ground. Until the event five days after Thanksgiving, 1954.
Married housewife 34-year-old Ann Elizabeth Hodges was not feeling well and decided to take an afternoon nap. At 12:54 PM her sleep was interrupted dramatically.
Observers in Talledega County and two neighboring counties saw and heard a loud boom, one so loud it knocked people down, such as a bicyclist in Montgomery many miles (and 12 miles/19 km high) away. Those lucky enough to look up saw a brilliant daytime fireball moving almost directly North. It split in three during the explosion that caused the boom. The whole meteor fall produced the Sylacauga meteorites.
One of those split pieces found a target. It went through a corner of the roof of Hodges house in the corner room where Mrs. Hodges was trying to sleep. If she had any music on the radio, that would have gone away when the nearly-nine-pound rock first crashed into it. Solidly made, the rock bounced over to nearby Mrs. Hodges’ left side, hitting her hand lightly but leaving a deep big bruised thigh (see Cover Photo).
Mrs. Hodges gained some notoriety from this, even appearing on Life magazine’s cover and on television in the program “I’ve Got A Secret” where celebrities try to guess an un-named person’s claim to fame. But the event was more than physically damaging to Mrs. Hodges; she wasn’t cut out to be a celebrity, developed stress similar to PTSD, and the Hodges got embroiled in a legal wrangle over ownership of the meteorite with the landlord of their rented house. By the time it was all settled, the huge offers of cash had gone away—old news—and the now-named Hodges fragment ended up all but gifted to the Alabama Museum of Natural History in Tuscaloosa, on the campus of the University of Alabama.
The Astronomical Sites of Sylacauga
By weird coincidence, if the meteor could be animate enough to pick where to land, it might have thought where it was going was home, but missed—the meteor hit the house in a then-unincorporated area named Oak Grove. It just missed a better named target; across the street was a drive-in movie theater named…..Comet Drive-In. Today the theater is long gone but down the street are two, perhaps connected through ownership, businesses, the Comet Mini-Mart (a.k.a. Comet BBQ & Deli—the signs are different on opposite sides of the building) and Comet Used Furniture. Whether they were there when the Comet Drive-In existed, or the when the meteor hit, is unknown.
Let’s identify and tour the relevant locations. We will start at the northern end of Old Birmingham Highway (sometime listed as Old US-280) where it diverges off to the east today’s NW-SE-oriented US-280:
A historical marker for the Hodges meteor fall stands on the right side heading SE on Old Birmingham Highway. The historical marker is a mere 0.8 miles from our starting point. (See map at start of this section.)
At most two-tenths of a mile onwards the old highway crosses Odens Mill Road at a narrow angle, where the two Comet-named businesses are located.
A similar two-tenths mile heading back west of the intersection but on the cross street, Odens Mill Road, would lead you to the Hodges house site, where the meteor struck Mrs. Hodges. The house had a patch to the roof long visible from the street, lasted for many years until fairly recently, when it burned down. The building has been replaced by a mobile home or trailer.
The Comet Drive-In site is now partly a brand new subdivision of very similar and repetitively designed homes across the street from the house site, and along the nearby stretch of Old US-280 from the intersection until you reach a recycling center. Like any drive-in site, it is very flat there.
There are two other places in Sylacauga that have a connection to the Hodges fragment. The first is the Comer Museum and Art Center, at Broadway and Eighth Street.
From the intersection of Oden’s Mill and Old US-280, head east pass Comet BBQ and Deli on the latter road for 2.5 miles, where the road ends at Fort Williams Road in the north part of downtown Sylacauga.
Turn left and go another half mile to Broadway.
Head north (left) to Eighth Street in 0.8 miles, turn left and park in the rear.
Once a library, it was taken over by one of the city’s leading families, the Comers, descended from a Sylacaugan who had become governor. In this building, run with a limited staff and budget, an admirable effort to display the history of the town has a small area dedicated to the incident, with photos, copies of newspaper articles and a replica of the rock from space.
The second site is back down Broadway, about a half mile, at Third Street, in front of the city municipal building. There are several statues made from the famous Sylacauga marble, one of which is a fanciful representation of the rock falling to Earth.
The End of the Story
We see that the house no longer exists, and the marker is about 150 feet northeast of it on the Old Highway, not the local house street. What about Mrs. Hodges and the meteorite itself?
Ann Elizabeth Hodges divorced her husband 10 years later, who was far more interested and excited about the event than she. She passed away in 1972, at 52 years old. She had no children. Ann Hodges is buried in the tiny rural Charity Baptist Cemetery in Hazel Green, AL, north of Huntsville. Her simple marker lies in the southern section, named Old Part. There are two nearly intersecting pathways in the cemetery. Her grave is in the upper right part of that, about six rows east of the N-S pathway and about 4 ill-defined rows south of the E-W pathway that separates the Old Part from the New Part graves to the north.
Those are the people and places, What about the things? Her ex-husband initially maintained possession of the radio , and he died in 2012. But then…..
What about the Hodges meteorite, and the radio today? That is a story for Part 2, in the next The Galactic Times.
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Interested in Astronomical Travel? Here are a list of 18 stories that have appeared in The Galactic Times with the issue number, available to paid subscribers, and elsewhere :
Tycho (and Kepler) in Prague; From Tycho’s Birthplace to His Grave – 24N
Star Wounds Along the Moon’s Shadow Path – 24C
Eating and Clubbing at the Planets #2 – 42
Odessa Meteor Crater – 42
Eating and Clubbing at the Planets – 41
Astronomy Art in Birmingham, AL – 38
The Starry Streets of Mobile – 10
Halting Steps for an Outdoor Planetarium in Ireland – 8
A Visit to Orion. Orion, AL – 4
A story about exploring the Wetumpka Crater was published in The Galactic Times InDepth Newsletter Issue 1, in November 2022. Go to tgtindepth.substack.com .
Articles were also in the original The Classroom Astronomer Magazine, at www.classroomastronomer.com . The issues can be cheaply purchased there by issue number:
23 - Photons Focused On: Astronomical Europe
22 - Photons Focused On: Astronomical Heidelberg
22 - The House of Astronomy (Germany)
14 - Photos Focused On - The Trail of William Herschel
12 - Photons Focused On: Astronomy in Mexican Cityscapes
11 - Model Solar Systems - More Than A Walk In The Park
6 - Photons Focused on: Korea's Observatories, Ancient and Royal, Modern and Public
1 - Arizona, Where "I Can't Find The Big Dipper" is Heard (lists and URLS of astronomical places to go)
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Happy Equinox
Dr. Larry Krumenaker