AURORA BOREALIS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 926, 22 November 1933, Page 1

AURORA BOREALIS.

Estimate of Height From Photographs. LONDON, November 10. Six scientists, under the leadership of Mr J. M. Stagg, of the Air Ministry’s Meteorological Office, have returned to London after a year spent in the barren lands of North-Eastern Canada, as one of the sixty stations that the International Commission has established to examine weather conditions in the northern and southern polar regions. ✓ Mr Stagg said to-day that, despite the fact that there had ofteq been 75 degrees of frost and bitter winds, the achievements included the measuring of the height of the Aurora Borealis by two cameras sixteen miles apart. These had taken 4700 double photographs, which would take two years to work out. Other expeditions had taken similar pictures enabling the Aurora to be measured across the world. “ We sent up many balloons equipped with self-recording instruments,” he said. “ Two of these were recovered and showed that they had reached a height of eight and a half miles. They penetrated the stratosphere, in which the records showed the temperature gradually increased.”