The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 60, December 30, 1897 A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls

Excerpt

The heavens are affording us an interesting study just now.

Our kind old friend, the sun, it is who is giving us this benefit.

One of the largest sun-spots which has ever been observed is now to be seen.

So large is this spot that it is not necessary to look through a telescope to see it. By using a smoked glass, to dim the intense light of the sun, any one can look at the spot for himself.

Nowadays, when all persons connected with the daily papers are on the lookout for some startling fact that shall sell their newspapers, such an occurrence as the enormous increase in the size of a sun-spot is too good to be let slip by them.

Extra editions about the sun-spot were issued by some of the most enterprising journals, which contained sensational pictures, and statements that the sun-spot was in fact a new world which was about to burst forth from the body of the sun. According to these accounts, the new world was to be sent whirling through space, hurled, as it were, at our earth, which was to be shattered to pieces by it.

Except that such stories serve to call the attention of unscientific people to scientific facts, and teach them to observe the wonders of the universe, it really seems a shame that such marvels should be used as bogies to scare the ignorant and superstitious.

As a matter of fact, very little is known about these sun-spots. They occur in greatest numbers in periods of about eleven years apart, and astronomers and geologists agree that periods of rainy and dry seasons seem to correspond with the sun-spot periods.

When the greatest number of spots are visible on the sun, scientists agree that the climatic conditions on the earth are normal and even. When there are fewest spots on the sun we have extreme temperature and sudden changes. When we say that astronomers and geologists agree on this point, we must also admit that some astronomers are not quite satisfied that the fact has been proved.

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.

A magnetic storm is a disturbance of the magnetic field which surrounds the earth; its presence is shown by a disturbance of the needle of the compass, and it often interferes with the electrical currents, making it difficult and sometimes impossible to use the telegraph-wires.

The aurora borealis is a wonderful light seen in the sky in high latitudes, and less frequently in other parts of the world—except during the activity of the sun-spots.

It appears as irregular patches and dancing columns of light which flame across the sky. Red, white, pale green—these shafts are now dim, now bright, seeming to throb and pulse as they glow and pale. As you watch them they change their form, and, from being pillars of fire, change to masses of glowing color.

A flash-light dancing across the sky gives you some, though a very poor notion, of an aurora. The aurora has thousands of such flashes of light, changing form and color as you watch them—filmy shafts of light, coming you know not whence....