A Day Aurora

Abstract

A CONTROVERSY was carried on in your columns about a year ago as to the possibility of an aurora being seen during the day time. A recent communication from Padre Seechi to the French Academy of Sciences will be found of interest as bearing on this question. Writing from Rome on the 27th of August, he says (Comples Rendus, p. 613):—“On the 15th of this month we had an Aurora Borealis by day, at ten o'clock in the morning up to midday. The magnetometers were greatly disturbed, and in the heavens at half-past ten appeared an arch of light cirrus clouds, stretching from N.N.W. to N.E., and crowned along the whole of its contour by numerous and fantastic rays (jets fila-mentcux). The forms of these rays so perfectly resembled those of the solar protuberances that some of the drawings of them might easily be mistaken for drawings of solar protuberances even by people well accustomed to these observations.”