Abstract
A WONDERFULLY fine auroral display took place last night, very far exceeding in extent and brilliancy that of the 24th ult., as seen from this place. It began to show itself soon after sundown, attained its maximum about 8 o'clock, and had not wholly disappeared at 11. At about 8 o'clock more than half the visible heavens was one sea of colour, the general ground greenish, yellow, and pale rose, with extensive shoals of deep rose in the east and west, and from the north; streaming upwards to and beyond the zenith, tongues and brushes of rosy red so deep that the sky between looked black. The spectroscope, a direct-vision one, showed four lines in the rosy portion and one in the greenish; one strong red line near the C, one strong pale yellow line near the D, one paler near the F, and one still paler beyond, with a faint continuous spectrum from about the D to beyond the F. The C line was very conspicuous and the brightest of the whole, intermediate in position and colour to the red of the lithium and the calcium, with both of which I am familiar; plainly there were two spectra superposed, for while the red portions of the aurora showed the four lines with a faint continuous spectrum, the greenish showed only one, near the D on a faint ground. Of course, no numerical accuracy was attainable with so simple an instrument, only the judgment of the eye; but the conviction was very strong that the rosy hue was owing to hydrogen, possibly resulting from decomposition by electrical discharges of the excessively attenuated watery vapour existing in the higher regions of the earth's atmosphere, which Tyndall has shown to be capable of producing the blue colour of the sky, and by the consequent loss of which the blackness of space was discernible.
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F., T. The Aurora Borealis. Nature 3, 6 (1870). https://doi.org/10.1038/003006a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/003006a0
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