Sound of the Aurora

Abstract

UPON this subject it may not be out of place to recall the fact that the passage of large meteors is not uncommonly described as accompanied by a hissing sound. I have met with statements of this kind in the case of meteors which were proved to have been twenty, thirty, or forty miles distant from the observer, and the sound of which, therefore, if it had reached him at all, must have reached him after such an interval of time that he would have been very unlikely to connect the two phenomena. Moreover the sound described in these cases is of a totally different character from the true sound of meteors, which is spoken of by those who have heard it as a heavy roaring or rumbling sound.