The night the stars fell, 1833
A meteor storm so intense that people across North America thought the world was ending.
Key facts
- People and tradition
- North America, including Lakota and other Plains nations
- Region
- North America
- When
- 12–13 November 1833
The story
Before dawn on 13 November 1833, people across North America woke to a sky full of meteors, falling, by some estimates, at tens of thousands per hour. Some believed the Day of Judgement had come and prayed in the streets; others watched in wonder.
Many Lakota winter counts, painted records in which each year is remembered by one image, mark that year with falling stars, and it is often called 'the winter the stars fell'. Among African Americans in the South, the night was long remembered, and the phrase 'the night the stars fell' passed into songs and stories. A popular 1934 song, 'Stars Fell on Alabama', took its title from it.
What science says
This was a meteor storm of the Leonids, which come from the dust trails of Comet 55P/Tempel–Tuttle. Most years they give only a few meteors an hour, but when Earth passes through a dense, fresh trail the rate can soar. Watching the 1833 storm, the astronomer Denison Olmsted noticed that the meteors all seemed to come from one point in the constellation Leo. That observation of a radiant helped show that meteors come from space, not from the weather.
Did you know?
Strong Leonid storms returned in 1866, 1966 and, more modestly, around 1999 to 2002.
Winter counts were kept by several Plains nations and can be used to date events across many generations.