Aurora borealis

“ Creaking and roaring the massive icebergs among, on comes the tempest, and the scientist is thankful for the much needed shelter. The sun, too, has deserted him, and the grand aurora borealis, like a flaming sword above the lost Eden, seems to guard the Arctic realms, while sparkling gems glitter on each icy pinnacle. ”

“ About ten o’clock, as we stood round our camp-fire, we were startled by a brief but striking display of the aurora borealis. My imagination had already been excited by talk of legends and of weird shapes and appearances, and when, on looking up toward the sky, I saw those pale, phantasmal waves of magnetic light chasing each other across the little opening above our heads, and at first sight seeming barely to clear the treetops, I was as vividly impressed as if I had caught a glimpse of a veritable spectre of the Neversink. The sky shook and trembled like a great white curtain. ”

“ No sound breaks upon the stillness of the scene, except the gentle murmur of the winding stream or the roar of some far off waterfall, softened and subdued by distance, till it mingles in harmony with the clear shrill notes of the whippowils, who never close their waking eyes, but serenade the moon till morning light, while every object upon which we turn our eyes reminds us of the fancy sketch of some fairy land.
We gaze upon the grand array, when Aurora Borealis plays her antic freaks, fights her mimic battles, waves her flaming banner along the northern skies. ”

“ Ever mindful of the welfare of the creatures whom he has formed, the Almighty has appointed a light to mitigate the darkness of the polar regions when the sun, in its appointed course, withdraws for a season.
What the aurora borealis is no one knows, although many have hazarded opinions regarding it. What it is like is known even to ourselves, though the faint indications of it which sometimes beam in our own heavens are not to be compared to the brilliancy of the spectacle that is occasionally presented in the northern skies. ”

“ It is therefore now clearly proved that the aurora borealis is not an extra-atmospheric phenomenon. To the proofs drawn from the appearance of the phenomenon itself we may add others deduced from certain effects which accompany it, such as the noise of crepitation, which the dwellers nearest to the pole affirm that they have heard when there is the appearance of an aurora, and the sulphurous odor that accompanies it. Finally, if the phenomena took place beyond our planet and its atmosphere, why should they take place at the polar regions only, as they often do? ”

“ Not to see sunrise and sunset, and the changes they bring with them, day after day, enlivening, inspiriting, strengthening, is felt at first as an intolerable burden. The stars shining at all hours with equal brilliancy, and the lasting darkness which reigns for twenty days of each winter month when the moon is below the horizon, become a weariness and a discomfort. The traveller longs for the reappearance of the moon; and yet before she has run her ten days’ course, he feels fatigued by the uniform illumination.
But sometimes a relief is supplied by the phenomenon of the Aurora Borealis. ”

“ Those incidents were now present, in a peculiarly plaintive murmur of the ocean, the kindling waves, and a delicate play of the Aurora Borealis. When we reached our vessel it was almost midnight, and still there was sweet daylight in the far north-west, moving along the circle of the northern horizon to brighten into morning before we were half through our light and dreamy slumbers. Weary and drowsy, all have crept to their berths ”

“ Though many exploring expeditions have penetrated the icy polar solitudes, very few men have given the time and patience necessary for a systematic study of the aurora. No travelers should enter the realms of the polar lights without being prepared to record, with the accuracy required by science, the plays of this heavenly mystery. I believe that, when men shall have penetrated a little farther southward into the unexplored area about the south pole, the aurora australis will be found just as brilliant, as varied and as frequent as the aurora borealis. ”

“ In the beautiful Aurora borealis, with its trembling diffusive lights, and its many-coloured rays, we have what may be regarded as a natural exhibition of magnetism, and we appear to have within our grasp the explanation we desire. But we know not the secret of even these extraordinary meteorological displays. If we pass an electric spark from a machine through a long cylinder, exhausted of air as far as possible, we have a mimic representation of the Northern Lights—the same attenuation of brightness, almost dwindling into phosphorescence ”

“ The sun scarcely sets in the west until it rises in the east. At Summit lake, which is at the top of the mountains, there is no night at all, it being in latitude sixty north and longitude one hundred and sixty west.
The display of the aurora borealis each night is a scene never to be forgotten. Night after night the whole northern sky is aflame with a light akin to sunlight tempered by moonlight and enriched by the splendor of the rainbow’s glorious hues. The Tlingit Indians believe the aurora to be the ghost-dance of dead warriors who live on the plains of the sky. ”

“ In the long winter nights the aurora borealis glares and blazes in the sky, "roaring and flashing about a ship enough to frighten a fellow," as an old quartermaster, who was with Sir F. L. McClintock in his search for Sir John Franklin, used to tell the midshipmen. In the prolonged sunset and sunrise the sky is ablaze with colour, and, when the sun has gone, the rarefied atmosphere produces many curious astronomical figures. As explorers penetrated farther into the great ice-bound region they encountered fresh peculiarities. ”

“ With the exception of one or two pet days, the weather of the past fortnight has been stormy and wild, with heavy falls of rain on the lowlands, and sleet and snow among the mountains. In no one season since we first became a student of the heavens, now more than a quarter of a century ago, have we had so many splendid exhibitions of aurora borealis as the last three weeks have presented us with in a series of tableaux vivants, which, while they charmed and delighted the intelligent observer, made the vulgar gape in astonishment and alarm. ”

“ And so Billy sailed far, far away toward Aurora Borealis and safe from Boreas and Squall.
[181]
CHAPTER XIV. KING CALCIUM AND STERRY OPTICAN.
What a dazzling sight was the town of Aurora Borealis when it broke on Billy's vision! Sparkling blue, red, and golden houses cut out of solid icebergs. Even the poorest huts shone with all the colors of the rainbow in the wavering, flickering light that rose and fell on them. ”

“ As the aurora borealis flashes through the darkness of the polar region, the nights in the tropics are made light by a curious, brilliant phenomenon: particularly bright sparks flash out in the ocean, at places where the waves break over rocky cliffs. Over one hundred kinds of animals may co-operate in producing this magic effect. ”

“ If, now, we imagine the phenomena growing more complicated and becoming irregular, with the arcs rising above the horizon and the rays multiplying, shooting through the curves in such a way as to illuminate the vacant space, and extending themselves out toward the magnetic south in somewhat oblique directions, we have the common aurora borealis passably explained. Within the projection of the corona, toward the magnetic pole, is a zone where we may observe the auroras in a southerly direction, and, still nearer to that pole, the meteor only rarely illuminates the horizon. ”

“ There the aurora borealis is lighted up, and the trembling needle brought to rest, and there, too, in the mazes of that mystic circle, terrestrial forces of occult power, and vast influence upon the well-being of men, are continually at play.... ”

“ Our observer has seen this arch a number of times and regards it as one of the most instructive features of the aurora. Some observers have doubted its connection with the Aurora Borealis, but Mr. Weed does not share in this doubt, he having, on April 13, 1871, witnessed its entire formation, and having seen the most convincing evidence of its connection with the aurora. This is what he saw: At 10 P. M. a dark segment north by east crowned with the ordinary auroral arc of light and with streamers above this; in other words, an Aurora Borealis. ”

“ When an Aurora Borealis is visible, there is a marked increase in the amount of twinkling. It would be interesting to follow up this last 88 named discovery by an endeavour to ascertain whether the fluctuations which are coincident in point of time with an Auroral display depend upon optical considerations connected with the Aurora, or on physical considerations having any relation to the increased development of terrestrial magnetism. ”

“ So much for the Aurora Borealis with which every one who has wintered in the far north is so thoroughly familiar. There is a different story to be told in the south, where, during the two cruises and the wintering of the Scotia not a single Aurora Australis was seen. Neither do the Swedish and French expeditions appear to have seen any definite displays of the aurora. Dr. Nordenskjold writes to me, saying, "We never did see any display of aurora at all during the time of our stay in the South, though looking always for such." ”

“ Alexander Buchan, "have severally investigated the geographical distribution of the Aurora Borealis. The region of greatest auroral action is an oval-shaped zone surrounding the North Pole, whose central line, i.e. the more or less elliptical line halfway between the northern and southern extension of the zone, crosses the meridian of Washington in latitude 56° and the meridian of St. Petersburg in latitude 71°. It follows from this that auroræ are more frequent in North America than in the same latitudes in Europe. ”

“ Often after the last lingering beam has faded in the west, and all the stars have come out in the deep blue heaven, a dark mist appears behind the hills in the north, and from its dun recesses arise the ever-changing corruscations of the mysterious aurora borealis. ”

“ Standing on an open plain, on a mountain summit especially, and gazing into the vast vault above and the spatial infinitudes around, the whole atmosphere seems ablaze with them, the air soaked through with these dazzling coruscations. At times, the intensity of their motion produces flashes like the Northern Lights in the Aurora Borealis. The sight is so marvellous, that, as the Seer gazes into this inner world, and feels the scintillating points shoot past him, he is filled with awe at the thought of other, still greater mysteries, that lie beyond, and within, this radiant ocean. ”

“ The only fact that has been actually proved to everybody's satisfaction is that, during the time when the most spots are visible on the sun, there are always more magnetic storms and displays of the aurora borealis. ”

“ The Aurora Borealis has never been explained satisfactorily, but you and I know its meaning. Strange plants and birds unknown to our world have from time to time been found upon our most northern shores. As I have already told you, the reindeer of Spitzbergen are marked by the hand of man, but what man no one knows, as the island is uninhabited, and as they could not have come from the south, they must have crossed the ice from some undiscovered country to the north.
"Almost all of the civilized nations have from time to time expended large sums of money in determining the figure of the earth. ”

“ In the polar regions, both north and south, where thunder-storms are less frequent, the atmospheric electricity assumes the form called the aurora borealis, or the aurora australis, according as it is seen north or south of the equator. ”

“ Dalton considered Aurora borealis as a magnetic phenomenon, and that its beams are governed by the earth’s magnetism. We know that the arc of light produced between the poles of a powerful galvanic battery is readily deflected by a good magnet; and we have lately learned that every vapour obeys the magnetic force. [183] It is, therefore, yet a question for our consideration, does the earth’s magnetism produce the peculiar pheno [Pg 251] mena of Aurora by acting upon electricity in a state of glow? ”

“ AURORA POLARIS, Aurora Borealis and Australis,Polar Light, Northern Lights, or Streamersan electrical meteor, appearing most frequently in high latitudes, in the form of luminous clouds, arches, and rays, of which the latter sometimes meet at a point near the zenith, and form what is called a boreal crown. ”

“ Without any desire to generalize too hastily, we cannot but express a feeling,—amounting to a certainty in our own mind,—that those manifestations of luminous power, connected with the phenomena of terrestrial magnetism, which are so evident in all the circumstances attendant upon the exhibition of Aurora Borealis, and those luminous clouds which are often seen, independent of the Northern Lights, that a very intimate, relation exists between the solar radiations and that power which so strangely gives polarity to this globe of ours. ”

“ On Sept. 25th occurred a very magnificent Aurora Borealis.
"I do not find when the investigation of Corrections of Solar Elements was finished, or when my Extracts from Burckhardt, Connaissance des Temps 1816, were made. But these led me to suspect an unknown inequality in the Sun's motion. On Sept. 27th and 28th I find the first suspicions of an inequality depending on 8 × mean longitude of Venus—13 × mean longitude of Earth. ”

“ Forster supposes that the electric exhalations in a country so much covered with snow must be very few, and these so much consumed by the frequency of the Aurora Borealis, that there is never collected at one time a quantity of fluid sufficient to produce thunder and lightning. ”