What was the breakthrough?[Donald Olson:] It involves a particular painting. One of the painters we're very interested in is Frederic Church, from the Hudson River School in New York. He's an unusually accurate depicter of the sky. One day we acquired the catalog from an exhibition of his paintings. On the back cover was this spectacular meteor travelling horizontally--it's what's called an "Earth-grazing meteor"--and it had fragmented into a long procession of fireballs. As soon as I saw that, I immediately thought that it might be what Whitman was writing about.
from New Scientist: Forensic astronomer solves Walt Whitman mystery
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