An account of an extraordinary luminous appearance in the heavens, seen at athboy in Ireland, on the 21st of March, 1833

Abstract

The noble author’s house is situated in lat. 53° 37' N., long. 6° 54' W. On the evening of the 21st of March last, at 9 P.M., a stream of luminous matter, reaching from the eastern to the western horizon, which it entered to the north of the constellation of Orion, was observed passing about midway between the Great Bear and Arcturus, and directly over the two principal stars of Gemini. The phenomenon was not accompanied by the usual flashings of an Aurora, but appeared to flow, when attentively observed, in a rapid stream from east to west, and varying in intensity in its course. His Lordship compares it to the stream from the pipe of an engine played over the head of a person standing under it, about the middle of its course. The light was most brilliant at the eastern extremity of the arch, where it was about 1° wide, gradually increasing in width and diminishing in intensity as it approached the western extremity, where it may have occupied about 5° or 6°. Stars of the second and third magnitudes were distinctly visible through the arch, at least from the meridian to the western horizon ; and though not apparently at a great elevation, light clouds occasionally seemed to pass between it and the observer, obscuring its light. During twenty minutes that Lord Darnley observed the phenomenon, it seemed to proceed through its whole extent from north to south, its edges, which, when first observed, extended equally on either side of Castor and Pollux, having in that time entirely left the most northern of those stars. It had wholly disappeared before ten o’clock.