The Qingyang event was 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 ext ...

or air burst that took place near Qingyang in March or April 1490. The area was at the time part of

Shaanxi Shaanxi is a Provinces of China, province in north Northwestern China. It borders the province-level divisions of Inner Mongolia to the north; Shanxi and Henan to the east; Hubei, Chongqing, and Sichuan to the south; and Gansu and Ningxia to t ...

, but is now in

Gansu Gansu is a provinces of China, province in Northwestern China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeastern part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibetan Plateau, Ti ...

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 meteoroid 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 w ...

. Some historical Chinese accounts of the meteor shower recorded many deaths, but the official Ming dynasty history records the event without mentioning casualties. The casualties are therefore doubted by many 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 ''

History of Ming The ''History of Ming'' is the final official Chinese history included in the '' Twenty-Four Histories''. It consists of 332 volumes and covers the history of the Ming dynasty from 1368 to 1644. It was written by a number of officials commissio ...

'' (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. However, the ''History of Ming'' 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

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Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) in La Cañada Flintridge, California, Crescenta Valley, United States. Founded in 1936 by Cali ...

and his collaborators have noted several similarities of the Qingyang 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 ''History of Ming''. Additionally, there are records of it in local gazettes and histories of the region. The ''History of Ming'' 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 In lunar calendars, a lunar month is the time between two successive syzygies of the same type: new moons or full moons. The precise definition varies, especially for the beginning of the month. Variations In Shona, Middle Eastern, and Euro ...

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.

Meteor shower

Coincidental comet

See also

References

Further reading