Norman Lockyer Observatory

Abstract

Bulletin No. 2 of the Norman Lockyer Observatory, Sidmouth, recently issued, contains an appreciation of the late Sir Robert Mond, chairman of the Observatory Corporation for twenty-one years and a generous benefactor to the Observatory. A further note of a personal nature gives an account of the unveiling of the memorial to the late director, Dr. W. J. S. Lockyer, at which Sir Robert Mond presided just three months before his death. Part of the memorial alluded to is the Oxford micro-photometer, a description of which is given in the present Bulletin by the director, Mr. D. L. Edwards, together with illustrations of representative tracings of stellar spectra and of several line-contours, obtained with the instrument. Mr. D. R. Barber contributes two papers. The first is a detailed account of the magnificent auroral display of January 25, 1938, which appears to have been visible over practically the whole of Europe and the North American continent. The second paper deals with the objective prism-spectra of Finsler's Comet obtained at its apparition of 1937. In a preliminary investigation (N.L.O. Bull., No. 1), Barber had found that a visual comparison of the intensities of the cometary bands at 4700 and 3880 A. due to C(IV) and CN(IV) radiation respectively indicated that the former was about 2½ times stronger than the latter, a result in the opposite direction from that deduced from slit spectrograms secured at the Mt. Wilson and the Lick Observatories. The Sidmouth spectrograms have now been analysed by means of the new microphoto-meter, and Barker confirms his first result with, however, a reduction of the ratio of relative intensities from 2½: 1 to l¼: 1.