JonnyMcA Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Aurora can appear in different forms. What you
> are thinking of tends to be the ribbon/curtain
> appearing ones, but they can also appear as sheets
> of light, or pillars etc. I had a quick look
> through online images of aurora and this one could
> be seen as a red shield embedded in the sky (at a
> stretch).
Yes: it does bear a bit of a resemblance ...
However, from
my post of last year:
Quote
The incident was described by
Conrad Lycosthenes in
Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon, published in 1557. Unfortunately,
Prodigiorum isn't available online (although there is a brief description of it
here) - but
this is a facsimile of the page with the Latin description of the event
...
Lycosthenes’ account is derived from the much earlier
Royal Frankish Annals.
This page has a translation of the relevant passage (as you'll see, it's very similar to the passage in Lycosthenes).
Looking again at the illustration, and wondering whether the "clouds" beneath the five horsemen could possibly represent ribbon-like aurorae as opposed to vaguely shield-like aurorae, it suddenly struck me that what is illustrated, of course, is a scene in
daylight - although nothing is actually said in the text itself about the time of day when the "flaming shields" were visible.
However, I think I have read that some aurorae might be visible during daylight hours ... but would that apply to the ones generated by this particular solar event?
Just to confuse the question some more, in the previous text (referring to AD 765) on the page with the illustration, there's something about stars (stellae) falling from Heaven, accompanied by an illustration of a 6-pointed star - but this event, too, seems to be portrayed as taking place in daylight (and it shows only one star ... )
I'm afraid that I don't know what conventions might have been applied to such illustrations (presumably the work of monks somewhere ... might the explanation have been something as simple as the fact that portraying the hours of darkness was harder work, demanding more engraving and ink?) Before coming to any further conclusion, however, perhaps one might need to know more about such points.
Hermione
Director/Moderator - The Hall of Ma'at
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2013 08:03AM by Hermione.
