Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 164, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 July 1919 — Blue sun Phenomenon Has Been Recorded Only Once; In August, 1883, in Java [ARTICLE]

Blue sun Phenomenon Has Been Recorded Only Once; In August, 1883, in Java

The expression “once in a blue moon,” meaning that occurrences are so widely separated by time as to almost never recur, is not merely a figure of speech. It has a basis of astronomical fact. The phenomenon has been twice observed in both Italy and Austria and once in England. There is no available record of it having been noticed in America. A blue sun has been recorded only once. That was In August, 1883. in Java. A day or tw*o before there was a very violent eruption of a large volcano about a hundred miles from Batavia. The eruption ended with an explosion in which a range of mountains was destroyed, a vast cavity being left in its place, more than a thousand feet deep at one point. Billions of tons of rock, mud and dust were thrown high in the air and the sun was obscured over a large area. At Batavia the darkness became so deep that street lamps had to be lighted in the middle of the forenoon. That condition prevailed until toward sunset. Then the volcanic cloud began to clear away, leaving the sun visible. Instead, however, of it being red, as it usually is when viewed through a Smoke cloud, it appeared as a magnificent deep-blue disk, remaining that color until it sank below the horizon. The phenomenon was seen by everyone within 30 to 40 degrees of the equator.