UNUSUAL AURORAL DISPLAY.

Timaru Herald, Volume CVI, Issue 16311, 13 August 1917, Page 4

UNUSUAL AURORAL DISPLAY.

To the Editor of he "Tiinaru Herald. 1, Sir,—The auroral display visible here last evening was perhaps the niosu magnificent and interesting ever witnessed in this country by any of the present generation. "It began as a huge circle of violet and pink flame, which slowly broke up into a series of inverted cones of heliotrope. There united to form a corrugated web extending from the eastern to the western horizon, and as the colour gradually changed to red, the whole became shot by horizontal bars of silver extending from east to west. This web next gave place to tongues of delicately tinted ilanie, intermixed with bars of silver suffused with saffron. The ordinary Aurora Australia now made a feeble endeavour to assert itself, but was immediately supplanted bv everchanging forms of a darker red than any that had yet appeared. Thoso forms took the shape, in one case, of a hand, the- fingers of which pointed upwards ; of dots and dashes; of strings and curtains, which in their kaleidoscopic changings became richly flecked with silver. The silver then, for a mo* mene predominated in the shape of a flat crescent, and numerous streaks and bulbs. Finally, to the west, one of the most remarkable sights of all jj-ccurred. Great tongues cf dark red flame issued as from a crater, and in a moment to these were added great dark columns as of smoke; and white ones as of steam continued to stream upwards some distance in a triple stem, and then spread out in cloud of lighter red, which at the edges gradually faded away. While this was taking pl.-ice, a great blatle of white stretched straight across the sky from the direction of Burke's Pass to tho Dashing Rocks, where it, eudod. The display lasted from six o'clock till eight, and lit up the whole sky during that period. Very few people one speaks to ever saw a red aurora before. Some remember that during the Franco-Prus-sian War one was seen in the Old Country. All agree that it is a phenomenon of rare occurrence. Experts tell us that the Aurora is composed of rays of negative electricity, not dissimilar to tho emanations from radium; that thoy acquire the colours green, red and violet from tho vapour in the atmosphere at tho time-; that they forebode warm, wet weather in ninety per cent, of cases and a continuance of frosty weather in ten per cent,_ They tell us also that tho rays constituting the Aurora emanate from sun-spots; that when sun-spots are numerous auroral corruscations are more frequent.

iS'ow, it may be remembered that Mr Clement Wragge,the well-known meteorologist, le-'tur&l in Timarn some eight or nina,years ago on the subject of sun-spots. He stated that sun-spots were more numerous then than they had been for long time past; that they wore increasing in number, that they exerted a disturbing influence on the oarth, and all that was in it and on it; lliat owing to the disturbance from these spots we might expect all sorts of upheavals when they reached their maximum number. He predicted floods, famines, earthquakes, and wars. And whether these things are dependent on sun-spots or not, there is nothing more certain that they have begun to mnko their appearance amongst us.—l am, otc. A. M. PATERSON. Timaru, August 10.