Nov. 23, 1882 | 
Nad POE 
83 
the Astronomer Royal, under the title of ‘ Magnetic 
Storm, Aurora and Sunspot” .— 
A REMARKABLE magnetic storm, preceded by several 
days of considerable magnetic disturbance, was observed 
here on November 17. It commenced suddenly —No- 
vember 16, 22h. 15m. G.M.T.—with a great decrease in 
all the magnetic elements, the declination being dimi- 
nished by more than 1°, the horizontal force by more 
than 1-1ooth part, and the vertical force by nearly 1-100th 
part. From 4h, to 7h., and also from rth. to 17h., the 
motions were large and violent, the range exceeding 2° 
for the declination, and 1-5oth part for the horizontal and 
vertical force. Earth-current disturbances were also re- 
corded, corresponding both in time and magnitude with 
the magnetic changes. 
In the evening, as soon as it was dark, a brilliant 
aurora was seen, commencing with a bright glow of red 
light extending from the north and west beyond the 
zenith, interspersed with pale green phosphorescent light 
and streamers. At 6h. 4m. a very brilliant streak of 
greenish light about 20° long appeared in the east-north- 
east, and, rising slowly, passed nearly along a parallel of 
declination, a little above the moon, disappearing at 
6h, 5m. 59s. in the west, about two minutes after it was 
first seen. The whole aurora had faded away by about 
7b., but it burst out again at 11h. 45m., when an auroral 
arch, with brilliant streamers reaching nearly to the 
zenith, was seen from north-north-east to north-west. It 
faded away about 12h. 1om. 
A remarkable sun-spot, visible to the naked eye, was 
seen on the sun on November 17 and following days, 
photographs being obtained on November 18, 19, and 20. 
Its dimensions on November 18, when it was near the 
central meridian, were: Length 194”, breadth 130”, area 
of umbra 735, of whole spot 2470 (expressed in milliontns 
of the sun’s visible surface), and its position : Heliographic 
latitude 19° N., longitude 121°. Its spectrum showed 
C, F, D3, and the D lines reversed over the principal 
nucleus, C and F being extremely bright, and D,, D,, D, 
doubly reversed. It slightly diminished in size on the 
two following days. This is the largest spot that has yet 
been photographed at Greenwich. 
Another very active magnetic disturbance commenced 
on November 19, soon after midnight, and at noon to-day 
(November 20) it is still in progress, all the elements 
being greatly disturbed. W. H. M. CHRISTIE 
Royal Observatory, Greenwich, November 20 
AN extensive aurora occurred la-t night, though I cannot pre- 
tend it was well seen here, both clouds and smoke preventing 
that. About sunset, and before any aurora had manifested it- 
self, the smoke of the city was simply fearful on every side, rising 
in enormous volumes, through the calm air from a general bed or 
bank of it, blue gray below, brown above, that stood ten degrees 
high on every side in impervious thickness, as seen from the top 
of the Calton Hill. And no wonder that we neither imprison, 
nor even fine, those who wilfully thus besmirch the skies and 
poison the air of the people, when the chief offender was a 
chimney in the prison establishment itself ; a chimney built like 
an oroamental watch-tower on a medieval Norman castle, but 
now sending up the most atrociously black column of pitchy 
coal smoke of all the chimneys around, and in vortex whirls that 
rose up to and fouled the very zenith sky ; leaving in fact no por- 
tion whatever of the celestial hemisphere where a pure, unadul- 
terated, and irreproachable optical observation of any astronomi- 
cal phenomenon could be made, to compare with one through a 
natural, clear atmosphere of oxygen, nitrogen, and water gases, 
About § or 9 o’clock aurora bezan to forcibly manifest itself, 
chiefly at heights of above 15° or 20°, smoke forbidding direct 
view lower down. Yet the aurora there must have been exceed- 
ingly bri;ht, for the cirro-cumulus clouds above that elevation 
were often brilliantly illuminated from below, as by a morning 
dawn. The brightest displays occurred about midnight, and 
more in the north-east than the usual north-west direction, 
They seemed all to be of the usual monochrome, c'tron colour, 
and mostly took the form of needle-shape jets shooting upwards 
from a low, but broad circular are, which they themselves 
assisted in forming; with this peculiarity too, that while no 
dark space was seen de/ow the arc, as so often occurs, such a 
space, eminently and distinctly aurorally dark, was formed near 
the middle of the north-east arc itself, in the shape of 2 black 
break in that arch, of about five or six degrees wide, and sharply 
terminated on either side, while no other part of the sky, whether 
clear, cloudy, or smoky, could be called more than gray in its 
cegree of darkness, 
Auroras of one kind or another have been so frequent here for 
several weeks past, that, taken in connection with the many 
large sun-spots, I trust Prof. Simon Newcomb will be now quite 
satisfied touching the philosophic doubt he expressed a few years 
ago in his ‘‘ Popular Astronomy,” published during the dark, 
aurora-less nights of 1876-7. For he, at that time, hesitated to 
consider the past auroras of, and about, 1870 a consequence of, 
or anything more than a coincidence with, that maximum period 
of sun-spots; but showed his kindly feeling for the hypothesis 
by saying, that if the auroras became numerous again at the next 
maximum of sun-spots, the connection of the two phenomena 
would stand on a much surer basis. 
Now sun-spots have been of late so large and frequent that I 
have had not a few lettersand communications about them. The 
last such party was a brace of newspaper reporters, who came 
together, open-mouthed ; for haying heard from country corre- 
spondents that spots had been discovered by them with the 
naked eye on the sun, they came to ask me whether it could be 
true ! 
Wherefore I could only tell them that it was exactly what 
should be at this time ; and I pointed their attention to a framed 
and glazed copy of my map of the temperatures, and rise and 
fall of the :un-spot numbers from 1826 to 1878, its date of pub- 
lication ; but with the sun-spot curve carried foraard in outline, 
and marked with a future maximum for 1882. 
C. Piazzt SMyTH, 
Astronomer Royal for Scotland 
15, Royal Terrace, Edinburgh, November 18 
OTHER correspondents will doubtless communicate to you 
their observations upon the encrmous sunspot now visible, and 
the magnificent aurora witnessed on Friday night, the 17th inst, 
My object in writing is to contribute a few notes respecting the 
grand magnetic storm registered by the Kew magnetographs. 
The disturbance commenced about 8°30 p.m. on the night of 
Saturday, the 11th inst. Throughout the whole of Sunday, 
Monday, and Tuesday the magnet continued slowly oscillating 
through arcs of about 20’ on either side of its normal position. 
Oa Wednesday and Thursday the vibrations were frequent, but 
very small, partaking rather of the nature of tremors. About 
10.30 a.m, on Friday the storm became violent, and from that 
hour up to 5.30 a.m. of Saturday, the oscillations of the magnet 
and the changes of force were incessant and frequently enor- 
mous, the declination needle ranging at times through almost 2°. 
Correspondingly large variations were also exhibited by the bifilar 
aad balance magnetometer. The largest deflections were be- 
tween midnight and 5 a.m. of Saturday. Through that day the 
movements were somewhat more sluggish, and from 2 a.m. of 
yesterday up to I am. this morning (Monday) the disturbance 
was but trivial ; it has now beccm: again intense, and at the time 
of writing (noon) it is found that the needles are moving in ares 
extending beyond their limits of registration, Observing the 
large sun-spot yesterlay, it was seen that the image projected 
upon a screen exhibited traces of coloration, yellow and red, in 
parts of the penumbra ; this was noticed both with the photo- 
heliograph and a Dollond refractor by two observers ; probably 
it will not have escaped the notice of other correspondents. The 
electrograph does not show any particular disturbance of atmo- 
spheric electricity during Friday night’s aurora. The tension was 
much higher and more variable during the dense fog of the suc- 
ceeding morning. G. M. WHIPPLE 
Kew Observatory, November 20 
AN aurora was seen here last night. At about 5 o’clock p.m. 
I was told the ‘northern lights” were visible, and found that 
patches of rose-coloured clouds were forming in both the east and 
west, the larger and brighter portion being in the latter part of 
the sky. At times these were varied by a white glow, and 
occasionally there seemed a disposition on the part of the red 
patches to form into columns or beams. This, however, was 
never perfected, and no corona actually formed. At a little 
before 6 o’c!ock a strange and most unusual phenomenon was 
