Abstract
I WILL not attempt to describe the wonderfully gorgeous display of aurora which I witnessed on Sunday night, February 4. I merely wish to mention a circumstance connected with it which may have some interest. I was watching for the zodiacal light at about 5.30, and, having perceived faint traces of it, I presently saw some peculiar red clouds a little above it; from their rapid change of form I soon became aware that this was the light of an aurora. From that time, and from that spot, it spread rapidly; a bright white arch extending high overhead from W. to E., while a segment of blue sky stretched low down in the S.E. in the magnetic meridian, the space between being filled with brilliant colours. Shortly after this a radiating point became very striking, not in the zenith, but at one-third the distance from the Pleiades to Capella; and then the folds of gorgeous light-red, white, and faint green, interspersed with dark shading, spread from it, like a canopy, down on all sides except in the N. W. I never witnessed or read of such a display in these latitudes. With one of Browning's small star spectroscopes the spectrum consisted of a small portion of brilliant red, then a bright band rather close to it, and then two others beyond; the two latter being rather nearer together than the first and second; that at the more refrangible end being the fainrest, and that near the red the strongest. I enclose a sketch showing the spectrum, the slit being wide open.
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KEY, H. The Aurora of February 4. Nature 5, 302 (1872). https://doi.org/10.1038/005302a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/005302a0
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