500,000 MILE FLAME.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16372, 28 October 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

500,000 MILE FLAME.

■ ■» ; SUN'S FIERY OFFSHOOT. Despite all our advance in the art of heavy gunnery, our bombardments are puny affairs, writes/ Professor Camilla • Flammarion, the French astronomer, com pared with Hie fiery outpourings of the sun at this present time. The trouble started toward? the end of May when sunspots appeared that could he easily detected with the naked eye. They were, as a matter of fact, about nine times larger across than the diameter of the earth. On May 26 the sun belched forth the biggest sheet of flame, that has ever been recorded. It shot, out over 500,000 miles « or twice the distance between the earth and the moon, travelling at the rate of some 400,000 miles an hour, or nearly 4000 times faster than our swiftest aeroplanes can travel. The French Astronomical Society, which numbers some 3000 observer correspondents throughout the world, was at once notified from all parts of the globe that this feverish outburst of the sun had given rise to all sorts of curious phenomena, the < most noticeable of which were an exceptionally misty sky and frantic agitation of ; the electric needle. About a month later the sun threw off another big cloud of metallic-vapours, and once more became covered with gigantic j?*. • spots. At the same time, magnificent haloes around the sun were noticeable . t ; from our own planet. Something of the same sort occurred in ;'.;■ July and August of 1915, setting up an '.-atmospheric perturbation recalling the ring of dust that gathered round the sun " -. after the great eruption of I£atmai in ■'-•'.-.June, 1912. The matter it blew off not ; , only troubled;the.weather for the rest of ;}' the. year, but affected it : materially, '"'"throughout' the Nortlfern 1 Hemisphere, all ■•■ through the following year* 1913. "/' %■ j