OBSERVATORY VISITORS

Wanganui Chronicle, 8 March 1947, Page 4

OBSERVATORY VISITORS

ARRANGEMENTS DURING BAND CONTEST.

Exceptional interest was shown in the Wanganui Observatory during the recent brass bands contest, and those responsible for the administration of the observatory have decided that the same facilities will be available to those who attend the pipe band contest.

Nearly 700 attended the observations.- Many, viewing the celestial bodies for the first time through the largest refracting telescope in the Dominion, showed much appreciation and grattltude for being enabled to attend night after night for nearly two weeks. The observatory will again be open during the pipe bands contest to-day (Saturday) and to-morrow (Sunday). The observatory will also be open to-day (Saturday) from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m., during the same hours on Sunday morning, for observation of sunspots. Great Increase in Sola Activity. Two large sunspots, one on the south-eastern quadrant and another on the north-eastern quadrant, are now clearing the sun’s eastern limb. The main disturbances are well clear of the limb, followed by much troubled areas and faculae. The southern outbreak is of an angry appearance and very active, about 150,000 miles long surrounded by a large disturbed area still coming round the sun’s limb. The northern area, though leas active, 14 nevertheless very much disturbed. The whole of the sun’s disc, is very spotted. Several large disturbances are now passing toward the sun’s western limb, and as some of these spots are of about 40 degrees from the sun's equator It does not appear as if the gun is finished with spots for some time to come yet. For the present the trafficking in sunspots is worse than it has been for years.

Sunspots are invariably associated with extremes, and as extremes of heat have been experienced in the southern hemisphere of late and extremes of cold in the northern, the reverse may be the case in the months to come.