Transcript

Introduction to the episode: The Mother Borealis

Music

Jake:
[0:05] Welcome to Hub History where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston, the hub of the universe.
This is episode 289 the mother borealis.
Hi, I’m Jake. This week, I’m talking about the sudden appearance of the northern lights in the sky over Boston.
In December 1719, Bostonians were astounded at the spectacle of lights dancing in the sky.
A sight that nobody alive could remember seeing before one of the Bostonians who watched in astonishment was Cotton Mather.
Mather was a puritan minister, the son and grandson of Puritan ministers, but he also considered himself a natural philosopher.
He had a scientific mind. And when he wasn’t busy presiding over church services or executions, he was a close observer of the world around him.
Confronted with this unprecedented natural phenomenon. Cotton Mather was torn.
His instinct was to see signs importance in the lights in the sky, but the world around him was changing.
And his fellow natural philosophers were more likely to see the clockwork rules of Newtonian physics than the hand of God or the devil moving the universe around them.

[1:20] But before we talk about Cotton Mather’s experience of the Aurora borealis.
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[1:39] As you could probably guess. I listened to a lot of podcasts before I decided to start one of my own.
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Like for example, 289 episodes about Boston history.

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[2:47] 304 years ago. This month, Cotton Mather wrote a paper in which he described an unprecedented natural phenomenon that he had just witnessed.
It’s almost strange to say that he wrote a paper as we’re so used to reading his printed sermons.
He did write some secular works including the Magnolia Christi Americana.
His history of the New English settlement through 1702.
This account of a late uncommon appearance in the heavens is another example of his scholarly writing as one of the most educated members of Boston society, separate from his duties as a minister.
At least at first glance in December 1719, he wrote on the 11th of this December 1719.
In the evening, we were here at Boston pretty much surprised with a luminous appearance in the northern part of the heavens which extended in the form of an arch from the northwest under the northeast, a considerable way.

[3:47] It was a sort of a cloud but so thin that the stars could be seen through it.
And first of a lighter but an no of a redder and more bloody aspect, the region of it was much higher than the ordinary clouds which were plainly seen moving below it.
Of this, we were soon more fully satisfied. When we received accounts from our friends, they saw a glade of light grow from a smaller bulk first into paler flames and then into redder and so into the color of blood.
And that as another, the red was darker at the western end of it and brighter at the eastern.

[4:26] It seemed something to expire and then to revive again as midnight came on, it renewed with what was commonly thought a more terrible aspect than in the former part of the evening.
Yeah, some hours after that, it’s so revived that people at work about their sawmills perceived their trees to look red with the reflection of it and they could see to manage their work by it as if the light of the moon which was now set had favored them.

[4:54] Mather had witnessed the northern lights, the aurora borealis that tourists now flock to Iceland to try to see it’s caused by the collision of charged particles from the sun with the earth’s atmosphere.
The aurora can appear as a variety of colors including green, red and blue and also purple.
It can appear as a variety of shapes including arcs, curtains and spirals.
It’s most commonly seen in the winter months when the nights are long and dark.
It’s also more common during periods of high solar activity.
The aurora borealis or northern lights is caused by the interaction of the earth’s magnetic field with the solar wind, a stream of charged particles that’s constantly streaming out and away from the sun in the earth’s atmosphere.
These particles collide with molecules of gas releasing energy in the form of light.
The color of the light depends on the type of gas that’s being excited.
For example, oxygen emits green light, while nitrogen emits red light.

[5:57] Across the Charles and Cambridge, a Harvard astronomer was also watching the skies that night.
Thomas Robie had been the driving force in overhauling the Math and physics programs at Harvard to incorporate the recent theories of Isaac Newton.
And he kept a regular log of his observations of the weather by day and his observations of the heavens at night using his 8 ft telescope.
If Mather represented a link to Boston’s Puritan past Robie was the scientific future.
Both men were Harvard educated and both Cotton Mather and Thomas Robie published their observations on the December 1719 aurora.
Thus, it’s a bit curious that only Robie gets credit for creating the first scientific paper by an American to be published in America.
In his account, he describes the same phenomenon that Cotton Mather also described.
In his account, the robot times includes more details about how the lights in the sky seem to move.

[6:55] December 11th 1719, this evening, about eight o’clock there arose a bright and red light in the east northeast like the light which arises from a house when on fire which soon spread itself through the heavens.
From east to west, reaching about 43 or 44 degrees in height and was unequally broad.
It’s streamed with white flashes or streams of light down to the horizon as most tell me, very bright and strong.
When I first saw it, which was when it had extended itself over the horizon from east to west, it was brightest in the middle, which was for me, northwest and I could resemble it to nothing but the light of some fire, I could plainly see streams of light rather than ordinary.
And there seemed to me to be an undulating motion of the whole light so thin.
Was this light as that I could see the stars very plainly through it below this stream are glade of light.
There lay in the horizon, some thick clouds which a few hours after arose and covered the heavens bright on the tops or edges.

[8:04] It lasted somewhat more than an hour though the height of its red color continued.
But a few minutes about 11, the same night, the same appearance was visible again, but the clouds hindered its being so accurately observed as I could wish for its appearance was now somewhat dreadful.
Sometimes it looked of a flame, sometimes a blood red color and the whole northeast horizon was very light and looked as though the moon had been near her rising.

[8:34] About an hour or two before the break of day.
The next morning, it was seen again as I am informed and those who saw it, say it was then the most terrible.

Sidney Parley’s Book: Historic Storms of New England

 

[8:46] As I’ve noted in the past Sidney Parley’s 1891 book, Historic Storms of New England is one of the greatest sources about meteorological and astronomical events that people in Boston witnessed from the time of English colonization to his publication date, on the subject of the northern lights.
Purley wrote that in 1719, the more beautiful and brilliant aurora borealis was first observed here as far as any record or tradition of that period informs us.
And it said that in England, it was first noticed only three years before this date.

The Strange Reaction to the Aurora Borealis in 1716

 

[9:21] While it’s still fairly rare to see the northern lights from New England, it’s not unheard of similarly, they can be seen from time to time in the UK, especially in the northern reaches of Scotland.
However, when they appeared in the sky in 1716, the aurora borealis were generally unknown and the English public reacted strangely.
In a 2020 article, Amelia Soth described how the English understood the lights in the sky to be a clash of otherworldly armies.
On the night of March 6th, 1716 people all over England witnessed a bloody war unfolding in the sky.
Some claim the battles were so fierce that they could smell the gunpowder.
Others saw flaming swords hanging in the air like Macbeth’s dagger.
Even in the dead of night, the aurora was bright enough to read by.
Sometimes the sky looked like a shattered mirror with cracks of light running through it.
At other moments, the air seemed to be full of tumbling flakes of fire to many.
It seemed like the end of the world.

[10:32] On Tuesday, last one observer wrote about a quarter before seven in the evening, one of my servants came to me in a great fright and begged of me to come out immediately for there were two armies fighting in the sky.

[10:46] He rushed outside only to find a most glorious light appearing through the intervals which was continually in motion.
Sometimes two different lights came with great seeming fury against one another, and having met together each rolled gently back like two waves that have dashed themselves in their opposition.
The splatter of light and color seemed to demand interpretation.
It’s no wonder then that so many people saw soldiers on the March to the pamphleteers.
These apparitions were omens legible signs of God’s will.

The Interpretation of the Aurora as a Sign from God

 

[11:23] They did not have to look far for the meaning of the 1716 aurora.
Only a few days before the Earl of Derwent Water had lost his head in punishment for a failed uprising against the king.
His body was interred on March 6th the day of the aurora.
The celestial phenomena quickly became known as Lord Derwent Water’s lights to its supporters.
The visions of armies in the sky were a clear message of God’s wrath at the earl’s execution.
Along with Edmund Halley of Comet fame and mathematician William Whiston.
One of the witnesses to the 1716 aurora was a Harvard trained minister and historian who just happened to be visiting London during the March 1716 solar storm.

[12:10] Thomas Prince’s account makes the northern lights sound beautiful and awe inspiring.
And when you consider that nobody in living memory had witnessed something like it, it seems all the more astonishing.

[12:22] There seemed to be a great stream of smoky light rising in the northeast, reaching from near the earth ascending and waving like the light of a great house or bonfire in the dark evening about a half mile off which we therefore thought of it first to be.
But soon altered our minds when we saw it increasing in breadth length and brightness and pushing forwards, we’re treating and advancing in the shape of a broadsword and like the shooting vibrations of a very high blaze until it extended to the point over our heads, as it increased in bigness.
So it did likewise in the swiftness and fury of its motion and grew by degrees into a bluish red and fiery color, almost like to that of the flame of brimstone.
But the color and figure continually changed. I know not how, till at length on a sudden it break forth into the appearance of a raging and mighty torrent of bloody waters that at first looked like the sudden giving way of a dam and the sea bearing all irresistibly before it, whereupon all that part of the heavens over us turned of an inconceivably bright rainbow color and immediately run into an admirable, inexpressible confusion of an infinite variety of motions that were amazingly quick and terrible to behold.

[13:40] While it seems strange to us that the aurora borealis was so unheard of in England in 1716 as to make people believe they are witnessing a battle in the clouds.
There is an explanation today, you or I may have never seen the aurora borealis, but we know someone who has or we’ve seen pictures or we’ve at least read about the phenomenon.
I’ve actually seen the aurora once when I was young enough that I barely remember it now in my mid forties.
However, nobody in England in 1716 or Boston in 1719 had witnessed the aurora borealis for at least a generation.
The monder minimum was a period of extremely low solar activity that occurred from approximately 1645 to 1715.
During this time, sunspots which are dark, cool areas on the sun’s surface were extremely rare.
In fact, there were some years during the ma minimum when no sunspots were observed at all.

[14:42] In a 28 year period. Within the minimum, only 50 sunspots were observed.
This contrasts with the typical 40,000 to 50,000 sunspots that are seen on the sun during a similar 28 year period today, the Maunder minimum is named after the 19th century English astronomer Edward Walter Maunder and his wife Annie Russell Maunder.
Their discovery was based on a careful review of past astronomical records.
The cause of this mander minimum is not fully understood. However, it’s thought to be due to a change in the sun’s dynamo, which is the mechanism that generates the sun’s magnetic field.
The dynamo is driven by the sun’s rotation and it’s possible that a change in the sun’s rotation rate could have caused the ma minimum, whatever the cause of the ma minimum.
It explains why observers on both sides of the Atlantic reacted with alarm when they saw brilliant dancing lights in the winter sky.

[15:41] In episode 287 we heard how followers of the preacher William Miller became convinced that the leon and meteor shower in 1833 was a sign of the impending apocalypse.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sidney Parley points out that many people reacted with that same sense of alarm.
When they witnessed the aurora for the first time. In 1719.
In December of 1719, the aurora appeared and the people became greatly alarmed, not dreading it so much as a means of destruction, but as a precursor of the fires of the last great day and a sign of coming dangers, just before eight o’clock in the evening of Saturday, the 11th of the month, the moon being within one or two days of the full, the Aurora flamed up in the northern heavens with remarkable brilliancy until that entire section of the firmament seemed to be on fire.

Ordinary people believe Judgment Day is close at hand

 

[16:36] After the 1833 media storm newspapers contained accounts of the event contributed by ordinary people.
So it was easy for me to confirm in my research that many people believe that Judgment Day was close at hand.
I went looking for similar accounts in the Boston newspapers from 1719 and I found nothing.
However, I was able to find an explanation of this absence in a presentation that Samuel Green gave to the Mass Historical Society in 1885.
It is interesting to note that the Boston newsletter of December 21st 1719 does not mention the fact nor does the Boston gazette of which the first issue appeared also on that day.
These were the only newspapers printed in the colonies at that period and they contained but little more than items taken from English journals, which perhaps is the reason that no reference is made to the novelty.

[17:34] I was able to at least somewhat confirm this apocalyptic assumption through a century sermon created by Benjamin Trumbull of Yale in 1801.
In his summation of the events of the preceding century, he includes confirmation not only of the unprecedented nature of the aurora due to the ma minimum.
But also of the public’s belief that these unexplained lights in the sky might be an omen of God’s coming judgment.
The aurora borealis or northern light is a new appearance in the heavens to this country.
Peculiar to the 18th century, it had been seen in Great Britain, especially in the north of Scotland for many centuries past.
But even in that country, it had not appeared for 80 or 100 years until March 6th, 1716.
Its first appearance in New England was on the 11th of December 1719.
It appears to have been a great light and begun about eight o’clock in the evening.
It filled the country with the greatest alarm imaginable.
It was the general opinion that it was the sign of the coming of the son of man in the heavens and that the judgment of the Great Day was about to commence, according to the accounts given by the ancient people who were the Spectators of it.
There was little sleep in New England that night.

[18:53] Now, if there’s one thing that Cotton Mathers remembered for today, it’s his role in the Salem witch trials at that time, about 30 years before the appearance of the Northern lights over Boston.

Cotton Mather’s role in witch trials and prodigies

 

[19:06] Mather was quick to see the devil’s hand and the affliction of a sick child, a suspicious birthmark or even a misshapen route as Michael P Winship points out in a 1994 article in the William of Mary Quarterly.
Cotton Mather believed that unusual phenomena like this could be prodigies from which a learned mind could divine the future.
It was no ordinary cabbage root that Cotton Mather examined in Boston in the summer of 1688 1 of its branches looked like a cutlass, another like a rapier and a third, like an Indian club, such freaks of nature or prodigies as they were called boded.
No good disruptions of the human sphere soon followed, disruptions of the natural sphere.
This was not the first ominous cabbage seen in New England and Mather later grasped its meaning as well as the meaning of other prodigies occurring around the same time, a fall of red snow, earthquakes and in the sky, flaming swords and the sound of guns when war subsequently broke out with the Indians.

[20:16] It’s hard to square that vision of Cotton Mather, the diviner with the champion of inoculation who he met in episode 114.
In 1721 Mather was the advocate of science in Boston, pushing doctors and citizens to accept the practice of inoculation against smallpox that he learned about from an African man named Onus who he enslaved.
Even in the face of death threats. Mather prevailed and he collected enough scientific evidence to show that the death rate among inoculated Bostonians was a fraction of that in the general public.
How did Cotton Mather who documented the signs and symptoms of witchcraft in his book, Remarkable Providences go on to become the champion of science.
Some 40 years later in his paper, Winship argued that Mather abandoned prodigies and prognostications after the witch trials.

[21:09] Thereafter, prodigies silently disappeared from Mather’s publications in the Magnolia.
Finished in 1698.
Mather erased many of the prodigies of New England’s past.
The famous comet that blazed before John Cotton’s death vanished and no cabbages sent forth prophetic roots.
The monstrous births of the antinomian leaders, too, prominent New England’s history to be ignored were handled discreetly.
Mather noted that Anne Hutchinson’s miscarriage was generally considered to have been prodigious, but he added that those present at the birth felt nothing exceptional.
Only a false conception with Mary Dyer’s monster.
Mather in an eerie passage chose to emphasize the sorcery of the midwife, Jane Hawkins, rather than Dyer’s deformed fetus.
Only the armies heard in the sky before King Philip’s war retained their full prodigious glory.

[22:08] In his paper describing the aurora that he witnessed from Boston Mather publicly wrestles with his former tendency to find signs and signals a natural phenomena.
Writing indeed, it is a weakness to be too apprehensive of prodigies in all uncommon occurrences.
Yeah, some things may be thought to be prodigies which may really be kindnesses to the world among which things we may particularly reckon exploded Meteors.
Be sure people are never more fanciful and whimsical.
Their imaginations are never more fertile than when they have uncommon occurrences in the clouds to work upon.
And it becomes not serious Christians to be dismayed at the signs of heaven as the heathen are dismayed at them.

[22:55] The scientist, Thomas Roby speculated that the aurora was caused by the same sulfurous particles that he thought caused summer thunderstorms when they were forced out of the ground and up into the sky.
So he didn’t quite have the phenomenon figured out either, that didn’t stop him from poking a bit of fun at Cotton Mather and at the uneducated masses who thought they had seen a sign of the coming apocalypse as to prognostications from it.
I utterly abhorred to test them all and look upon these to be.
But the effect of ignorance and fancy for, I have not so learned philosophy or divinity as to be dismayed at the signs of heaven.
This would be to act the part of a heathen, not of a Christian philosopher.
And here I would entreat you to take me right? For, I don’t mean that this sight was not surprising to me for I have said it was before, but I only mean that no man should fright himself by supposing that dreadful things will follow such as famine, sword or sickness.
Nor would I be understood to imagine that there will not be fearful sights in the heavens before the great and terrible day of the Lord, Mather hit back at Roby, not by arguing against a natural basis for the phenomenon they had both witnessed, but by pointing out the overconfidence of what was then a very new form of science.

[24:15] It is remarkable to see how much we are left in the dark and how much our philosophy is now at a loss about the lights that are ever now and then en kindled in the heavens and that are so near unto us.
We may talk some fine things about the sulfur and the nighter and the genesis, and the composition of them and make ourselves be admired for our learned jargon among them that have not learned the language.

[24:39] That comment about sulfur is of course a jab backer Thomas Roby and his sulfurous particles.
Mather continues. We may also propound under consideration how far the origin of such a northern twilight as our late 1 may be found in that constant milky way of the sun or glade of light which every year strikes from that part of the horizon where the sun sets up towards and almost under the pleads in the latter end of February in the beginning of March.
Whereof there is in the posthumous works of Doctor Hook, an account endeavored, but still the old philosopher’s ingenuous cry of darkness.
Darkness will return upon us.

[25:22] Perhaps Cotton Mather’s invocation of darkness or the blind spots of science has less to do with his own changing relationship with signs and prodigies and more to do with his sense of vanity.
The world of science was changing around him and it was important to Cotton Mather to remain a respected member of the intellectual community.
Winship wrote Mather was a keen student of prodigies.
It may seem incongruous that he also avidly followed developments in science.
The reconfiguration of science that had been taking place in England since the 16 fifties posited a world in which God manifested himself in natural laws.
Not through irregular providential meddling.
Historians have noticed that Mather had a sometimes uneasy relationship to the new science.
Some however have projected on him fears that there’s little evidence he felt such as Pascale and alarm over the infinity of space or dread over the atheistic implication of mechanism.

Mather’s Anxiety Over Newtonian Physics and Prodigies

 

[26:23] In general, historians believe Newtonian is with its God directed regular laws of nature still matters.
Anxieties about science left to his own devices.
Mather would have been able to reconcile Newtonian physics and prodigies with little difficulty, but he was not left to his own devices.
Rather, he grew aware that the transatlantic learned culture in which he avidly located himself scoffed at prodigies and dismissed those who believed in them as vulgar enthusiasts.
Thus, Mather realized that his attachment to prodigies put him at risk of ostracism from that culture.
He never felt threatened by science itself as he understood it.
The source of his anxiety was the limitation on legitimate speech within the circles promulgating the new science.
Like many of his contemporaries, Cotton Mather was happy to believe in Newtonian physics with a well ordered universe following natural laws and mechanisms that have been set in place by the all powerful God of the Bible.
Even in his secular paper on the aurora, he makes the argument that the faithful could see a divine hand among natural events without arguing that it had to pretend the second coming.

[27:36] Our sacred scriptures do sufficiently assure us that the angels both good and bad are sometimes particularly concerned about the Meteors in this atmosphere.
The tempests and the thunders raised there.
Yeah, that the heavens do rule and the invisible world has an astonishing share in the government of ours as un philosophical as it may seem to talk at this rate.
The further our improvements and philosophies are carried on, the less will it be found unreasonable?
The uncommon occurrences in the heavenly places of our atmosphere have doubtless their natural causes and yet they may rationally enough set the admiring and amazed spectator of thinking, what unknown things may be doing among the rational inhabitants of those regions?
This we do know that there shall be fearful sights and great signs from heaven and there shall be signs where we see the sun and moon and stars and the powers of heaven shall be in commotions.
And it is possible be at work in producing some of the fearful sights among the forerunners of a day that all sober men do look for.

Embracing Political Correctness and Superstition in Early America

 

[28:48] The times they were a changing and the old Puritan was doing his best to change along with them.
He may not have been willing to change his deeply held belief in the hand of God and the world around him.
But he was at least willing to hew to the new political correctness.
In a 2010 article about superstition in early America, Andrew Gardner writes that this shift may have been deeper than just choosing the right words.
Mather’s generation was the first to have to ask whether its world and its long held beliefs were right.

[29:22] In 1719, the northern lights unexpectedly lit up new England’s night skies.
Some were fearful for their future. Mather was not quite convinced and pursued his investigation of the aurora borealis with a suggestion that it was not unreasonable to suppose that angels were responsible.
Yet by 1726 2 years before his death, Mather was in print telling people to ignore superstitious fancies about eclipses or comets.
Perhaps you’d come full circle was Cotton Mather, a victim of early 18th century cancel culture.
He had adapted to the changing standards of acceptable language among the philosophical or scholarly class he so desperately wanted to remain part of.
On the other hand, he was only about two years away from his famous advocacy for inoculation.
Perhaps his mindset was genuinely changing or perhaps as Michael Winship pointed out in his 1994 article, Cotton Mather was still trying to balance with 1 ft in each world.

[30:29] Mother had learned and adapted to the new priorities of learned culture, but he was not comfortable with them.
He walked a narrow line between the new natural philosophy and his inherited religious culture.
Mather, while portraying himself as one of those consummate philosophers was not entirely prepared to let go of his belief in the prodigious nature of the aurora borealis.
He was in the uncomfortable position of addressing the philosophers out of a traditional religious culture whose assumptions were no longer reconcilable with those of English learned culture.

Mather’s Secular and Religious Interpretations of the Aurora Borealis

 

[31:05] In his secular description of the 1719 aurora, the learned Reverend cotton Mather threads, the needle of faith in science, using the novelty and wonder of the natural phenomenon, not as a prodigy of the future, but as a reminder to the faithful to look for God and the world around them and let it motivate them to return to the embrace of the church.
What interpretation is to be made of the aurora borealis that heaven has lately shown unto us?
I will say that though I can do very little by way of prognostic.
And I would not say that like the people of Gibe, when we see a pillar of smoke and a flame ascending in heaven, we must conclude that evil is coming upon us.
Nor would I think the meteor to be a signal forerunner of whatever happens to follow after it, a religious mind may even with some elegy of devotion, consider some intimations from heaven which are aurora borealis, may at least by way of occasional reflection lead one to think upon, whether the aurora borealis were a prodigy or no, the man is one who shall ridicule such an improvement of it.

[32:16] In Greenland where the night in the winter is excessively long when they don’t enjoy the moon, there arises a light in the north called, therefore, the northern light that shines all over the country as if the moon were at the fall.
The darker the night is the clearer the light. It looks like a flying fire.
It mounts up like a huge pole.
It passes from one place to another place. It continues the whole night and it is of incredible use to them in the business of their lives.

The Practical Use of the Aurora Borealis and Mather’s Anxiety

 

[32:48] We may also render our northern light of some use unto us and the greatest business of our lives.
If it awakens in us, the right thoughts of the righteous Winship points out a sad irony in ma’s uncomfortable embrace of science.
While he used the novelty of the aurora to convince the wider Boston community to return to the Puritan church.
His discourse with the wider philosophical world drove Mather himself to distance himself from that community of faith.
Winship wrote Mather’s retreat from prodigies was not compelled by his understanding of the implications of mechanism per se.
His mind had no problem occupying a universe filled by both active angelical tribes and Newtonian laws of physics.

[33:36] Mather could be in this sense, both a Newtonian and a puritan, but he was painfully aware that the natural philosophers whose good opinion he craved were contemptuous of such a combination, in that awareness, lay the source of his anxiety about science under its pressure.
He did not change his mind about prodigies so much about what constituted correct speech for a learned person under its pressure, he also began to withdraw from the shared godly community of his past.
The multitudes in Massachusetts continued to respond with awe and terror to the aurora borealis and other wonders throughout the 18th century.
But that awe and terror were no longer so readily a part of the religiosity of their college trained ministers.

[34:24] Mather and his successors may have stood apart from their contemporaries for a while, but it didn’t last while the Miller rights were still concerned with Armageddon.
In 1833. It seems like belief in astronomical events as signs of the second coming waned throughout the 17 hundreds in historic storms of New England.
Sydney Purley notes that the decline in apocalyptic thinking coincided with increasingly frequent aurora borealis in New England.
Though at first, the people were fearful for the consequences of such sights, the feeling wore off as they became more frequent.
It was found that they were without any apparent effect upon the world.
They have now become sights of curiosity merely to most people who while they cannot fully explain them, know that they pretend no evil.
Though many have ever since those early times been more or less concerned when any strange cloud appears.

The Commonality of the Aurora Borealis and Its Lost Significance

 

[35:23] By the time Harvard, Professor Isaac Greenwood described a 1730 aurora.
The phenomenon was so common that it barely warranted comment.
The aurora borealis has been very frequent with us of late but none either for the brightness variety or duration so considerable as what occurred on the last Thursday night, which was the 22nd of October.
This meteor has been observed in New England at different times ever since its first plantation.
But I think at much longer intervals than of late years and never to so great a degree as the present instance, just two decades had passed since Boston had witnessed the northern lights for the first time in living memory.
That was basically half as long as the interval between the Salem witch trials and the 1719 aurora.
And yet the tendency to see signs and prodigies and natural phenomena had nearly vanished.

[36:18] Today, you’re unlikely to see the aurora borealis from Boston, not because of a change in the solar cycle or any disruption in natural systems, but simply because the aurora is only visible in deep darkness and it’s nearly impossible to escape our city’s lights.
That’s unfortunate because there have been some recent geomagnetic events that I wish I’d seen under a dark sky.
Writing for NASA Adam Voland says in late April 2023 a severe geomagnetic storm in earth’s magnetosphere led to an especially vivid display of the aurora.
During the peak of the event, colorful lights illuminated skies well beyond the polar regions where the atmospheric phenomenon is most common as the northern lights lit up skies in places as far south as Arizona and Arkansas in the United States.
So did social media and news sites with dazzling photographs of rays, sheets and curtains of color dancing in the night sky.

[37:19] I guess our saving grace was April weather in Boston.
Even without the lights of the city, we wouldn’t have seen the aurora from Boston in April as reported by Justin Gonick for NBC 10, Boston, all of New England had the opportunity to view this amazing display of the northern lights, but cloud cover prevented many from enjoying it.

Cloud Cover Prevents Viewing of Recent Aurora Borealis

 

[37:40] Prime locations for viewing included most of Connecticut, Western Massachusetts and southern Vermont.
While New Hampshire, Eastern Massachusetts and Maine were sucked in with cloud cover and drizzle for most of the night.
Anyone who’s interested in this show probably lives close enough to Boston that the night sky never gets truly dark.
The next time a good aurora is predicted. Let’s all go up to Maine or somewhere dark and look to the north.
The next few months may be our best bet. As the peak of the sun’s 25 year cycle is expected to come between late winter of 2023 and fall of 2024.

[38:19] Happy stargazing to learn more about Cotton Mather and the 1719 aurora borealis.
Check out this week’s show notes at hubor.com/two 89.
I’ll have lots of primary sources for you to peruse. Starting with the competing accounts of the 1719 aurora published by Cotton Mather and Thomas Roby.

[38:41] I’ll also have descriptions of the 1716 aurora that was seen in England by Harvard, Professor Thomas Prince, astronomer Edmund Halley and William Whiston.
We’ll follow that up with Benjamin Trumbull’s century sermon, Sydney Ply’s historic storms in New England and Samuel Green’s presentation to the MH S from modern perspectives on the 1719 aurora.
A link to Michael Wench’s paper on Mather’s prodigies in the William of Mary Quarterly Amelia Softs description of armies fighting in the skies.
And Andrew Gardner’s article on Superstition in early America.
I’ll also have some pictures of the aurora borealis for you to peruse both some sketches made by Isaac Greenwood of the aurora scene from Cambridge in 1730.
And some photos taken by my dad. The one time I saw the aurora back in the eighties.
Sometime this week, I owe a debt of thanks to a listener named Horace who originally suggested this week’s topic and indirectly convinced me to work on episode 287.
About the 1833 Leonid Meteor shower back in January 2023 in the comments section for episode 266 which was about the first street lamps in Boston Horace made this suggestion.

[39:57] Dark streets may have confounded those about at night. But dark skies made city

The Astonishment and Fear of the 1719 Aurora Borealis

 

[40:03] dwellers more aware of the stars and moon than they’re likely to be today.
In 1719, the people of Boston and surrounding areas were astonished and frightened by the first bright appearance of the aurora borealis.
In many years, auroras were rare during the modern minimum when solar activity was low.
When I looked into this event a few years ago, prior to writing a small article, I found the Cotton Mather and astronomy enthusiast, Thomas Roby wrote dueling pamphlets on the display, the older Mather and the younger Robie having different opinions on what pretended, if you’d like to suggest an episode topic like Horace.
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Music

Jake:
[41:20] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.