400 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE, 



METEOROLOGY. 



RED SKIES. 



ISAAC P. NOYES. 



It is doubtful if anything ever created a greater commotion in the scientific 

 world then the red sky so conspicuous the past year. The scientists almost to a 

 man seem to have found, for them, a reasonable solution therefor in the dust 

 theory — dust either from meteors or from the volcano at Java, which occurred the 

 latter part of August, 1883. 



I, as a student of the Weather-Map, take exception to this dust theory and 

 maintain that this delicate redness in the sky is the result of the presence of a 

 minimum quantity of moisture in the air — and that water and not dust is the 

 cause, and that it is not peculiar to times of meteoric showers or volcanic erup- 

 tions, but to those conditions which we term high-barometer, when there is the 

 least possible moisture present in the atmosphere. 



The objections to volcanic dust and ineteoric dust are not altogether the same, 

 yet they are similar and in some respects identical. First, as to meteoric dust: in 

 the absence of any remarkable display of meteoric showers it could not be from 

 near meteors ; and had this phenomenon produced any such effect the dust pro- 

 ducing it would have been so plenty all over the surface of the earth as to have 

 left a such mark, or evidence, that it would have been useless to deny that it had 

 occurred, and there being some possibility of this red-sky effect being produced 

 by it. But then showers of meteors as a rule are not so universal in their distri- 

 bution ; they are more apt to be local ; and when they do occur they are plainly 

 seen. So this would seem to shut out near or local meteors. 



It may be claimed that it came from his distant meteors within the orbit of 

 the earth; that as the earth came around to their point the whole atmosphere 

 would then be affected. In this case the dust would have been so far away that 

 it would have made no difference as to time of day when, with a clear sky, it 

 might have been seen and its effect noticed. It would not have been necessary 

 first to have the Sun go below the horizon. At so great a distance the Sun would 

 shine through it, equivalent to us, perpendicularly to the plane of the earth. 

 This being the case it ought to have given, if dust would give such an effect, a rosy 

 tint to the sky at all hours of the day. Again, this effect would only have been 

 for a short time when the earth was passing the locality of these supposed meteors; 

 and then from this distance we would either have had an abundant supply of 

 dust to gather as evidence, or there would have been none at all to have been 

 examined by a microscope; /. e. there would be no "halfway doings" about it. 



