50 Notes vpon some Atmospherical Phenomena [No. I. 



night a succession of heavy showers, fogs and bad weather, but the 

 morning of the 21st was the commencement of a bright sunny day ; 

 the power of the sun, when that luminary was at an elevation (cal- 

 culated) of 17° 34' was considerably dimmed, shining with a pale 

 subdued light through the frozen mass of clouds in front of it ; around 

 the sun appeared a magnificent corona with a diameter of about 

 47° and nearly a complete circle Vide Plate II. ; 300° of the circle 

 being visible, the remaining 60° being occupied by a gap where the 

 corona appeared resting on the summits and sides of the Eastern 

 snowy range, down whose slopes the ends of the corona dissolved and 

 lost themselves. The corona was composed of two colours, violet on 

 the edge nearest to the sun and red on the outer edge, the two colours 

 blending together and forming a neutral tint in the middle of the 

 corona ; the order here observed with regard to the colours is simi- 

 lar to that observed in the rainbow. 



The true sun was flanked on either side at the distance of 11 45' 

 by a parhelion or mock sun of a pale unrefracted light, at an equal 

 altitude with the true sun, each parhelion forming the head of a 

 segment of a circle with a radius of 23° 30'; the segments of the 

 circles attached to the parhelia hung as graceful curving fringed 

 appendages, converging to a point below the true sun. The parhelia 

 were equal in size to the true sun, and were equi-distant from the 

 corona and true sun. Above the true sun was a segment of another 

 circle with a diameter of 47° and distant a,bout 11° from the true 

 sun, the concave side or the side away from the sun, was beautifully 

 fringed with prismatic and violet-coloured rays or tongues of moving 

 light, the sharp extremities of the moving rays pointing and flicker- 

 ing upwards. 



The main corona from its great size presented a magnificent 

 object, and its prismatic colours were most brilliant, almost as brilli- 

 ant as the colours of the true rainbow ; contrary to the custom of 

 rainbows which places the spectator between the bow and the sun, 

 and which enables the spectator to gaze upon this beautiful object 

 in the heavens with undazzled eyes, his back being turned toward 

 the sun — the corona and parhelia are always between the sun and 

 spectator and thus from the glare of the sun, much of their beauty 

 is lost. 



