itor." Maunder was at the Royal
Observatory, Greenwich, Nov. 17, 1882, at night. There was an aurora,
without features of special interest. In the midst of the aurora, a
great circular disk of greenish light appeared and moved smoothly across
the sky. But the circularity was evidently the effect of foreshortening.
The thing passed above the moon, and was, by other observers, described
as "cigar-shaped," "like a torpedo," "a spindle," "a shuttle." The idea
of foreshortening is not mine: Maunder says this. He says: "Had the
incident occurred a third of a century later, beyond doubt everyone
would have selected the same simile--it would have been 'just like a
Zeppelin.'" The duration was about two minutes. Color said to have been
the same as that of the auroral glow in the north. Nevertheless, Maunder
says that this thing had no relation to auroral phenomena. "It appeared
to be a definite body." Motion too fast for a cloud, but "nothing could
be more unlike the rush of a meteor." In the _Philosophical Magazine_,
5-15-318, J. Rand Capron, in a lengthy paper, alludes throughout to this
phenomenon as an "auroral beam," but he lists many observations upon
its "torpedo-shape," and one observation upon a "dark nucleus" in
it--host of most confusing observations--estimates of height between 40
and 200 miles--observations in Holland and Belgium. We are told that
according to Capron's spectroscopic observations the phenomenon was
nothing but a beam of auroral light. In the _Observatory_, 6-192, is
Maunder's contemporaneous account. He gives apparent approximate length
and breadth at twenty-seven degrees and three degrees and a half. He
gives other observations seeming to indicate structure--"remarkable dark
marking down the center."

In _Nature_, 27-84, Capron says that because of the moonlight he had
been able to do little with the spectroscope.

Color white, but aurora rosy (_Nature_, 27-87).

Bright stars seen through it, but not at the zenith, where it looked
opaque. This is the only assertion of transparency (_Nature_, 27-87).
Too slow for a meteor, but too fast for a cloud (_Nature_, 27-86).
"Surface had a mottled appearance" (_Nature_, 27-87). "Very definite in
form, like a torpedo" (_Nature_, 27-100). "Probably a meteoric object"
(Dr. Groneman, _Nature_, 27-296). Technical demonstration by Dr.
Groneman, that it was a cloud of meteoric matter (_Nature_, 28-105). See
_Nature_, 27-315, 338, 365, 388, 412, 434.

"Very littl