The Ch'ing-yang event of 1490 (also Ch'ing-yang, Chi-ing-yang or Chíing-yang meteor shower) is a presumed

meteor shower A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate, or originate, from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at extre ...

air burst An air burst or airburst is the detonation of an explosive device such as an anti-personnel artillery shell or a nuclear weapon in the air instead of on contact with the ground or target. The principal military advantage of an air burst over ...

Qingyang Qingyang () is a prefecture-level city in eastern Gansu province, China. Geography and climate Qingyang is the easternmost prefecture-level division of Gansu and is thus sometimes referred to as "Longdong" (). It forms an administrative penins ...

in March or April 1490. The area was at the time part of Shaanxi, but is now in the

Gansu Gansu (, ; alternately romanized as Kansu) is a province in Northwest China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeast part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tib ...

province. A 1994 study in the journal ''Meteoritics'' tentatively explained this event as a

meteor air burst A meteor air burst is a type of air burst in which a meteor explodes after entering a planetary body's atmosphere. This fate leads them to be called fireballs or bolides, with the brightest air bursts known as superbolides. Such meteoroids were ...

. Historical Chinese accounts of the meteor shower recorded many deaths, but those have not been confirmed by researchers in the modern era. In the same year, Asian astronomers coincidentally discovered comet C/1490 Y1, a possible progenitor of the Quadrantid meteor showers.

Meteor shower

At least three surviving Chinese historical records describe a shower of rocks, one stating that "stones fell like rain." Human fatality estimates in these sources range from more than ten thousand people to several tens of thousands of people. The official History of the Ming Dynasty contains a report of the event, and other journal records which describe the event are also generally considered reliable. The official Ming Dynasty history, however, omits the number of casualties, which therefore has been frequently either doubted or discounted by present-day researchers. Due to the paucity of detailed information and the lack of surviving meteorites or other physical evidence, researchers have been unable to definitively state the exact nature of the dramatic event, even examining the possible occurrence of severe hail. Kevin Yau of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and his collaborators have noted several similarities of the Ch'ing-yang event to the Tunguska air burst in 1908, which, if it had occurred above a populated area, could have produced many fatalities. One surviving account records: One source of Chinese astronomical information of celestial events, the ''Zhongguo gudai tianxiang jilu zongji'' (Complete collection of records of celestial phenomena in ancient China) records ten works that discuss the March–April 1490 event, including the official History of the Ming Dynasty. Additionally, there are records of it in local gazettes and histories of the region. The '' History of Ming'' work (the 明史, or Míng Shǐ) states only that there was a rain of uncountable stones up to the size of goose eggs. The date given was the third lunar month of 1490, which translates as March 21 to April 19, 1490.

Coincidental comet

In 2007 astronomers determined that the annual January Quadrantid meteor shower may have originated with the disintegration of Comet C/1490 Y1, approximately a century after it was first identified in 1490 by Chinese, Japanese, and Korean astronomers. A connection with asteroid (196256) 2003 EH₁ has also been suggested. The large difference between the timing of the January meteor showers and the 1490 Ch'ing-yang event—which occurred in March or April 1490 AD—makes a relationship between the comet and the Ch'ing-yang event appear unlikely.

Meteor shower

Coincidental comet

See also

References

Further reading