MAGNIFICENT AURORA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22971, 24 February 1938, Page 7

MAGNIFICENT AURORA

RECENT EUROPEAN DISPLAY SPECTACLE SEEN IN LONDON [from our own correspondent] LONDON, Jan. 20 Since the first startling appearance of Halley's comet, more than a century ago, Londoners havo probably never been treated to so magnificent a display in the heavens as they -were by the appearance one evening this week of the Aurora Borealis. For six Lours or more the northern sky was ablaze with a lliokering glow of ever-chang-ing colour, which at one period almost turned night into day. _ The King watched it from SandringJiain, and those Londoners favoured with a big enough northern horizon stared at it with the fascination of a people less accustomed to such cosmic phenomena than some of their brothers in the Empire. The heavenly display -was not without its earthly effects. It delayed express trains by causing failure of electric signalling apparatus, airmen's compasses behaved erratically, and Wireless reception was interfered with. It was all due, it is stated, to an extra large sunspot on the side of the sun facing our planet, which is . disturbing the so-called "Hcaviside Layer"—-that mysterious belt of wandering atoms 'surrounding• the earth at a considerable height in the atmo- I sphere. 1