A meteor swarm this month?
 
The year was 1178 and the date was June 18th.  A small group of Canterbury monks looked up at the nighttime sky and saw a series of fiery explosions on the crescent moon.   The mystery has baffled astronomers, but a number believe that what the monks saw was a swarm of meteorites that either struck the lunar surface, or hit our own atmosphere and exploded.  The phenomena has been termed the “Canterbury Swarm”.

One astronomer, Dr. Duncan Steele,  theorized that the Canterbury Swarm was associated with the Beta Taurid meteor stream.  He further speculated that the same meteor stream was the cause of the June 30, 1908 Tunguska event in Siberia and other less spectacular collisions as well.  The truth is that we don’t know for sure.
 
What we do know is that the Beta Taurids are an annual meteor shower and they form the Taurids stream that we pass through twice yearly (June and October).
 
So far this year we’ve had several near misses and one direct hit in Russia on February 15th .   Though not related to the Taurids stream, these recent events still serve to remind us to keep looking up…

Not fearfully watching chunks of space debris, but instead for our Lord.  Amen?

 

Bruce Baber