Abstract
AN aurora of a very unusual splendour for the latitude was seen here on Sunday evening February 4, 1872. The sky, extending in azimuth over 197° from N.E. to nearly W.S.W., was generally illuminated. The brilliance of the glow varied considerably in different directions from time to time during the night. On the south horizon there was a bright bluish segment of light, whose position in azimuth and brilliance varied slightly from time to time. The streamers were well seen, and their convergence towards the point to which the south pole of a magnet is directed could be most distinctly traced. The streamers extended at about nine o'clock to the constellation Orion, and Sirius was well within the auroral glow. With a spectroscope I saw one bright line in the spectrum of the auroral light, but the spectrum was too faint to allow of any successful attempt to determine the refrangibility of the light. Unfortunately our magnetical equipment is such that I can give no information respecting the extent of the magnetical disturbance at the time. The aurora was seen as far north as Bloemfontein, latitude 29° 8′ south. A faint aurora was seen here in October 1870, but no such aurora as that of February 4, 1872, appears to have been visible for at least fifty years. The aurora was well seen over a large portion of the colony, and considerably frightened the natives.
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STONE, E. The Aurora of February 4‡. Nature 5, 443 (1872). https://doi.org/10.1038/005443b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/005443b0
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