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WILSON BENTLEY ’ S AURORAL OBSERVATIONS

Wilson Bentley’s aurora1 observations in northern Vermont were made over the period from 1883 to 1931, thus encompassing the solar activity minimum at the beginning of the twentieth century. Long term series of aurora1 observations by a single observer in a region of reasonable frequency of occurrence are rare, and are important for the study of solar-terrestrial relationships. Bentley’s data have been abstracted from manuscript materials. The annual variation and the secular variation over the entire period are presented. The results are compared with the variations of sunspot and magnetic activity during this period. The aurora1 activity minima, comparable to the similar sunspot minima, in the periods around 1902 and 1912 are clearly evident. Changes in the spring/fall ratio of aurora1 occurrence frequency over the entire period under study are also evident. In recent years there has been increasing interest in the use of proxy data for studies of solar variability, the solar wind and other parameters defining the properties of the interplanetary medium. Proxy data is essential for such studies since direct observations from space are only a few decades old and direct, systematic observations of the Sun exist for only the past two or three centuries. Hence studies of solar variability or of the solar wind at the Earth, for example, must rely on aurora1 or magnetic data to provide information for extended periods (see, for example, Silverman and Feynman, 1981; Feynman and Silverman, 1980; Siscoe, 1980; Feynman, 1983). Aurora1 data are especially useful since observations have been reported over the past two millennia at least. Studies of the variability of solar-terrestrial parameters over extended periods of time generally use one of two types of data sets. In the first type as many data points as possible are collected from a diverse array of sources. If the data set is sufficiently dense then errors due to spotty geographic or temporal coverage and inconsistencies in methods ofdata collection can be minimized. Alternatively, a single, self-consistent source may be used. A data set derived in this way will usually be limited in the range of time over which the data is taken, but will be superior to a more randomly selected data base for the period for which the data is available. In this paper we present a data set of aurora1 observations taken by a single observer, Wilson Bentley, over a period of 49 years in a location where aurora1 occurrence is of reasonable frequency. Comparison of the resulting data set with other geophysical parameters illustrates the usefulness and importance of self-consistent observations of individual, careful observers over an extended period of