Unusual rainbows as auroral candidates: another point of view

Abstract

Several auroral events that occurred in the past have not been catalogued as such due to fact that they were described in the historical sources with different terminology. Hayakawa et al. (2016) have reviewed historical oriental chronicles and have proposed the terms "unusual rainbow" and "white rainbow" as candidates to auroras. In this work, we present three events that took place in the 18th century in two different settings (the Iberian Peninsula and Brazil) that were originally described with similar definition/wording used by the oriental chronicles, despite the inherent differences in terms associated to oriental and Latin languages. We show that these terms are indeed applicable to the three case studies from Europe and South America. Thus, the auroral catalogues available can be extended for occidental sources with this new terminology.

6 pages, accepted for publication in Publ. Astron. Soc. Jpn

References in corpus (3)

• Historical Sunspot Observations: A Review
• Solar activity around AD 775 from aurorae and radiocarbon
• Records of sunspot and aurora during CE 960-1279 in the Chinese chronicle of the Song dynasty

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Do the Chinese Astronomical Records Dated AD 776 January 12/13 Describe an Auroral Display or a Lunar Halo? A Critical Re-examination
• Records of Auroral Candidates and Sunspots in Rikkokushi, Chronicles of Ancient Japan from Early 7th Century to 887
• New sunspots and aurorae in the historical Chinese text corpus? Comments on uncritical digital search applications