From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

From Songs of the Immortals, illustrated by Haldane Macfall, c. 1920.  (In honor of "Floating Head Friday.")

Here's a comet falling to the earth by way of Buddha's Crystal and Other Fairy Tales, 1908.

An illustration from The Stealers of Light by Marie, Queen of Roumania (1916).

"The [threefold] rays of the bright polar star" (from Lachin y Gair by Lord Byron).

Dreaming in (Venn) circles, from My Little Girl by Walter Besant, 1873.

From Buddha's Crystal and Other Fairy Stories by Yei Theodora Ozaki, 1908.

Here's a precursor to the 1937 film A Star is Born, from Baby's Book by Ida Scott Taylor (1898).

"The night that changes not," from Songs of Love and Death by Margaret Armour, 1896.

An illustration from Modern Housekeeping (1905).

An illustration from The Gate Beautiful by John Ward Stimson (1903).  The caption reads: "The Law of the Three Primaries."

An illustration from The Wrong Woman by Charles D. Stewart (1912).  The caption reads: "The stars, a vast audience, had all taken their places."

"The sky is pocked with stars.  What eyes the wise men must have had to see a new one in so many.  I wonder, were there fewer stars then?  I don't know.  I fancy there's a mystery in it." —The Lion in Winter

Our illustration appears in Pleasant Hours, 1887.

Traditionally, a falling star is considered an inauspicious omen.  To propose marriage during a meteor shower is surely tempting fate.

This image appeared in Punch, 1866, two weeks after a dramatic Leonid meteor shower (with reports of a stunning 2000 to 5000 meteors per hour).

An illustration from a 1912 issue of Metropolitan magazine.

An illustration from an 1894 issue of Century Illustrated magazine.

Staring into the depths: an illustration from an 1898 issue of Century Illustrated magazine.