Auroric Lights

Abstract

HAVE the auroric lights been studied in regard to their relations with changes in the weather? From casual observations made during the last twenty years it would appear that there are at least two distinct kinds of light so classed. One is brilliant and transparent, of a white, yellowish, bluish, or yellowish-red colour; while the other is semi-opaque and of a bloody red colour. The latter generally seems to be considered in Ireland a forerunner of bad weather, or, to quote a Connemara shepherd, “Them bloody lights are bad.” The first kind generally appear as intermittent pencils of light, that suddenly appear and suddenly disappear. Usually they proceed or radiate from some place near the north of the horizon; but I have often seen them break from a point in the heavens, this point not being stationary but jumping about within certain limits. The brilliant aurora of September, 1870, was one of the latter class, except that the centre of dispersion was not a point, but an irregular figure, sometimes with three sides, but changing to four and five-sided. It began as rays near the north horizon and proceeded up into the heavens in a south-south-east direction. Sometimes, however, these lights occur as suddenly flashing clouds of light, like those of July 16 last, which were of a white colour; but at other times I have seen them of blue and reddish yellow. If this class of lights are watched into daylight they appear somewhat like faint rays of a rising sun. One morning while travelling in West Galway, in the twilight, they were very brilliant, and quite frightened the driver of the car, who thought the sun was going to rise to the north instead of at the east.