The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-10-22
SUN RINGS.
Some Queer Things Astronomers See
 Through Big Telescopes.


 Baltimore News.
 In regard to the halo around the sun which created much excitement through out the eastern section of this country, teal section of the Maryland Academy of Science, says:
 ''vsry often, when the heavens are ov- ercast by slight. or light fieecy clouds, we observe colored rings about the moon and the sun. They are termed halos, or aureoles. I have never observed a halo about the sun in the latitude or Balu- more. but halos about the moon are quite frequent One of the most brilliant that I have observed in Baltimore occurred some time in the beginning of 1901. very often the halos do not form a complete circle, but are visible only Tn sectlons. Probably the reason we do not notice the halo about the sun Is on account or its intense brilliancy, and that we do not look at 1t directly. The best way to ob- serve halos is to observe the reflection of the sun in a black mirror, black glass or glass smoked on one side.
 Tn meteorology the halos are divided into two classes-the corona, which is Of small diameter, and the halo, which is of a greater extent In the corona the color of the inner part of the ring Is blue and the outer red. In the large halo the red is on the inside and the blue out side. The corona is classed as different phenomena-that is. the light from the sun or moon in encountering the small particles in the cloud or which form the cloud is broken up. scattered or diffract- ed like the graftings that Professor Raw land ruled at the Johns Hopkins Uni versity.
 ''Diffracted light may be of two kinds It may pass through fine material and be diffracted like in a transmission grat- ing, or 1t may be broken up by encount- er1ng the fine particles and being reflect ed. We never have a dinraction caused by a reflection of the light from the is supposed to be due both to diffraction and reflection. When light is diffracted it passes through 8 medium which both disperses 1t and bends it out of its course. Thus the rainbow is produced by the sunlight passing through the drops of water and the water regional ways opposite to the sun. Halos occur only in the higher clouds and are more frequent than the corona.
 Sometimes the halos intersect each other. and at their intersection round patches are formed called mock suns dium for refracting the light are mostly small ice crystals or ice needles.
 MT. Gildersleeve, the late president of the Baltimore Astronomical Society, re- lated that at various times he had ob- served snow storms. through the tele- scope while making daylight observa- tons of the stars and planets. At any rate. there is considerable solid matter in the atmosphere that we sometimes ob- serve in sweeping around with the tele- scop. On rare occasions we can see bird flying across the field of view, of which not a sign can be- seen with the naked eye. Then, again, small specks fly across, looking like small meteors.
 At one time I observed a ray seem ing to have It's origin at the setting sun on the horizon and extending as a sleIh- der beam clear to the zenith and lost to view a little tc the east of the zenith. The mock suns are mostly seen in high latitudes. We can then come to the con- ciusion that halos and mock suns are simply due to the state of the atmosphere where 1t contains moisture, ice crystals and snow, and they existed from the re- motest times, when the earth had been fashioned to its present condition. and there is no cause for alarm"