AIR GLOW INQUIRY IN SOUTH ISLAND

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29776, 20 March 1962, Page 12

AIR GLOW INQUIRY IN SOUTH ISLAND

Air glow, the faint radiations from the upper atmosphere which are still one of the mysteries of science, may soon be thoroughly investigated in the South Island. Dr. F. E. Roach, chief of the air glow and aurora section of the National Bureau of Standards at Boulder, Colorado, who is in Christchurch for talks on the scheme, explained that the South Island falls neatly within the belt where Southern Hemisphere manifestations of the phenomenon may be expected. Air glow was believed to arise from charged particles escaping from the trapped radiation zones into the upper atmosphere, Dr. Roach said, and, though it was so faint

the naked eye, there were now other means of observation. It was an indication of activity, the significance of which was not yet known. In the tropical zone, occasional extremely strong concentrations of red air glow had been reported, and in Samoa a few years ago an “aurora” was seen with the naked eye.

These “red arcs” apparently differed in nature in the middle lattitudes between the Equator and the polar regions. In the Northern Hemisphere they had been checked as lying in i. narrow band running across parts of the United States and France Correlations for the Southern Hemisphere indicated that they should be observed in a band which exactly covered the South Island. This region therefore, seemed ideal for the development of this research, said Dr Roach.

Air glow could be regis-

tered by the “all-sky” camer,ai . the spectrograph, which could spread light over the spectrum so that the “red arcs” were separated; and by a photometer calibrated so that only these particular wavelengths reached the cell. lonospheric research on charged particles and aurora research were very well developed in New Zealand by the universities and by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Dr. Roach said. Because there was strong evidence that these two phenomena and air glow were inter-related, it seemed likely that New Zealand could make a useful contribution to the third investigation.

Dr. Roach spent a good deal of yesterday in the physics department of the University of Canterbury, and this morning he win visit its upper atmosphere research field station. This evening he will address the mathematics and physics section of the Canterbury branch of the Royal Society on his work.