Abstract
ATTENTION was directed in NATURE of June 25, p. 932, to a report from Johannesburg of sunset afterglows in South Africa following the eruptions in the Andes last April. Two other correspondents have been kind enough to send further extracts from letters from the same place. Mr. A. Stanley Pye-Smith, 51 Wickham Road, Beckenham, Kent, sends the following extract from a letter dated May 3: We are having very wonderful sunrises and sunsets, as a result of the volcanic dust from South America. The sky glows red long after the sun is visible, while there are no clouds at all to catch the light, as far as one can see. It is a pleasant change to have prolonged light in this latitude where darkness falls so quickly." Miss Cecilia F. O‘Connor, 402 Milton Road, Cambridge, has sent extracts from a letter, dated May 4, received from her brother, Mr. E. R. O‘Connor, Germiston, Transvaal, which give more precise details, stating that at sunset the colours are magnificent, but it is about an hour later when they are best. Normally at that time it is pitch dark. But now the western sky is lit a flaming red light to the zenith as though there were a huge volcano belching out volumes of fiery smoke. The red light is so powerful that everything catches a reflected tint, but yet you can see stars shining through, even to the west! What clouds there are, are etched in flame, and, towards the zenith, the red shades through purple to the ink blue of night." The same writer in a further letter, dated May 18, describes the sunsets as appearing to get finer, possibly because of the unsettled weather.
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N., E. Sunset Glows and the Andean Eruptions. Nature 130, 139–140 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130139b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130139b0