The Fields of Force in the Atmosphere of the Sun

Abstract

WHILE appreciating M. Deslandres's concluding paragraph of his letter in NATURE of Oct. 8, and reverting first to the problem of the equal spacing of magnetic disturbances, synchronous with corresponding spacing of solar longitudes, I am afraid my studies, to which he kindly alludes in Comptes rendus for Sept. 1926, came to a stop for reasons of the statistical material I up to then could work upon, failing me. Nor can I dispose of the required magnetic recording apparatus of the kind used at Meudon, and I was wholly confined to the Greenwich spot records, and to my own observations of eruptive phenomena either at the limb or on the disc. The first diagrammatic representation of this phenomenon which I made covers the minimum period, section from July 1913 to Dec. 31, 1914, and I found that my method for a maximum activity period resulted in great diagrammatic complication, not to say confusion. All the same, I felt from the first convinced that I was by no means dealing with an accidental phenomenon, and I am therefore very hopeful that the method used at Meudon will ultimately be completely successful.