L'Aurore Boréale Étude générate des Phénomènes produits par les Courants électriques de l'Atmosphère Resultate der Polarlicht-Beobachtungen angestellt im Winter 1882 und 1883 auf den Stationen Kingua Fjord und Nain

Abstract

THE organised and obstinate scientific curiosity of our time has not neglected the beautiful phenomenon of the “Polar Dawn.” Yet its investigation is attended by peculiar difficulties and discouragements. It can be profitably conducted only amid scenes of frozen desolation, in the grisly depths of Arctic winter nights, under conditions taxing man's energy and resource to live, to say nothing of observing. The appearances in question are, moreover, as elusive as they are surprising. They promptly kindle the imagination, but leave the understanding, unless prepared by special study to apprehend something of their causes, baffled and helpless. Nevertheless, auroral research, though Nature seem to frown upon it, has been pursued with indefatigable energy during the last half century. It has formed the principal object of some, it has occupied a prominent place in the programmes of all recent Polar expeditions; besides being furthered, with less heroic zeal, by writers and thinkers unequal or averse to the company of thermometers normally below the zero of Fahrenheit. Nor have these labours been thrown away. Much of the mystery long attaching to the evanescent splendours of Arctic skies has been dissipated. There is no longer any doubt as to the kind of explanation appropriate to them. Their laws and relationships have been, to a great extent, elucidated; a satisfactory theory of their origin is at hand; some circumstances of their occurrence, long in debate, have been attested on unquestionable authority.

L'Aurore Boréale. Étude générate des Phénomènes produits par les Courants électriques de l'Atmosphère.

Par M. S. Lemström. (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1886.)

Resultate der Polarlicht-Beobachtungen angestellt im Winter 1882 und 1883 auf den Stationen Kingua Fjord und Nain

Von Dr. K. R. Koch (Berlin: A. Asher and Co., 1886.)