ARE THE RED SUNSETS RETURNING?

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 11, 12 March 1892, Page 263

ARE THE RED SUNSETS RETURNING?

There have been reports recently of the appearance of brilliant red sunsets resembling those that ornamented the evening skies for many months after the tremendous eruption of the volcano of Krakatoa, in the East Indies, in 1883. The fine dust thrown into the higher regions of the atmosphere on that occasion was distributed by ivrial currents all over the earth, and had the effect of producing strangely beautiful sunrise and sunset effects, the phenomenon assuming, in our latitudes, the appearance of a fiery glare like the reflection of a distant conflagration. There has certainly been no general return of such skyey spectacles this year, and yet reports from various sources seem to indicate that some increase in the redness of the sunset colours may have taken place. If so, the explanation remains to be found. When the splendid sunsets that followed the Krakatoa eruption began to make theii appearance in this country and Europe, it was at first suggested that they might be the result of an encounter between the earth and a cloud of cosmical dust. There was, perhaps, nothing essentially impossible in that idea, but it was quickly abandoned when the evidence began to accumulate that the strange dust came from Krakatoa. If now a new series of red sunsets should make their appearance, without being preceded by any extraordinary volcanic explosion, it is probable that the cosmical dust theory and other perhaps equally interesting theories would again be put forth to account for it. But the first thing to be done is to make certain that the ■sunsets are really any redder than usual: and anybody who chooses to look can help to settle that question, while at the same time making his eyes familiar with some of the most attractive phenomena in the reach of human vision.