WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM 49Through the end of the 18th century,
meteors had been commonly considered a
purely atmospheric phenomenon, like
lightning. The 1833 Leonid storm changed
all that, and kick-started the scientific
study of meteors. Shortly after the storm,
astronomer Denison Olmsted proposed a
cosmic origin of meteors, suggesting they
came from a cloud in space. The Leonids
returned the following November, though
not at “storm” levels. Astronomer Heinrich
Olbers predicted in 1837 that the Leonids
would have especially large displays
every 33 or 34 years. Sure enough, the
November 13–14, 1866, display was spec-
tacular. At about the same time, astrono-
mers Wilhelm Tempel and Horace Parnell
Tuttle independently discovered the comet
that bears their name. Giovanni Schiaparelli
soon determined that Comet Tempel-Tuttle
was the source of the Leonids.
In 1934, American writer Carl Carmer
published an autobiographical account of
the six years he spent living and teaching
in Alabama. He included stories of the
1833 Leonid meteor storm based on both
old newspaper accounts and stories he
heard from children and grandchildren of
eyewitnesses. “Many an Alabamian to this
day reckons dates from the year the stars
fell,” Carmer wrote, “though he and his
neighbor frequently disagree as to what
year of our Lord may be so designated. All
are sure, however, that once upon a time
stars fell on Alabama.” Folks would recall
that their son or daughter was born “about
the time the stars fell,” or that they got
married “a week after the stars fell.”
Carmer’s book, Stars Fell on Alabama,
quickly became a best-seller.
One of the book’s fans was music pub-
lisher Irving Mills. He was sure there was a
song in it, something that could be based
on or inspired by the meteor shower story.
Mills turned to Frank Perkins to write the
tune and Mitchell Parish to write the lyr-
ics. Perkins was a solid but otherwise
undistinguished composer. Parish, though,
was one of jazz’s great lyricists. Among
other classics, Parish wrote “Sophisticated
Lady” (Duke Ellington), “Moonlight
Serenade” (Glenn Miller), and “Stardust”
(Hoagy Carmichael). The lyricist turned
the shared memories of the 1833 meteor
storm into a song about romance: Boy fell
for girl the night the stars fell on them
both. “We lived our little drama / We
kissed in a field of white / And stars fell on
Alabama / Last night ...”
Like so many of Parish’s other pieces,
“Stars Fell on Alabama” streaked across the
musical sky like, well, a meteor — a meteor
that’s never stopped blazing. More than a
hundred artists have covered the song,
including Guy Lombardo, Bing Crosby,
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong,
Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane,
Bi l l ie Hol id ay, A n ita O’Day, Sta n Get z ,
Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Doris Day,
Kate Smith, Mel Torme, Ricky Nelson, and
even Jimmy Buffett.A quasar for The Byrds
Quasars, short for “quasi-stellar objects,”
are regions immediately surrounding
supermassive black holes at the centers
of distant galaxies. Their gravitational
fields suck surrounding matter onto
their accretion disks, releasing enormous
amounts of electromagnetic energy.“Radio-loud” quasars (about 10 percent of
all known quasars) emit radio waves and
visible light up to a hundred times as bright
as our entire Milky Way Galaxy.
In 1959, no one had a clue what these
mysterious cosmic radio sources were.
Their measured redshifts implied they
were billions of light-years distant, but that
meant their energy output was gargantuan.
Perhaps the objects were much closer, and
the large redshifts were caused by light
escaping from a deep gravitational well.
That year, radio astronomers from the
California Institute of Technology found
one they named CTA-102 — the 102nd
entry in the Caltech Survey, Part A.
In 1963, Russian astrophysicist
Nikolai Kardashev offered a novel sugges-
tion: CTA-102 could be the product of a
highly advanced extraterrestrial civiliza-
tion. Two years later, Gennady Sholomitskii
found its radio emissions were variable.
Perhaps this strange celestial object
was the powerful radio beacon of an
advanced alien race. This was a wondrous
suggestion — with nothing to support it.
The “ET hypothesis” was still making
the rounds in 1966 when it captured the
fancy of a 24-year-old musician named
Roger McGuinn.
McGuinn is the guitarist, singer, and
songwriter who founded The Byrds, one ofThe 1833 night when “stars fell on Alabama”
and the song it later inspired were so memorable
that the phrase was featured on the state’s
license plate between 2002 and 2009.
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS: ROGUE FALCONER3C 273, a quasar
located in an elliptical
galaxy 2.5 billion
light-years away, lies
in the constellation
Virgo. While some
once believed quasars
might be generated
by alien civilizations,
astronomers now know
they are the accretion
disks surrounding
supermassive black
holes. ESA/HUBBLE AND NASA