ABSTRACT
The aurora australis with its colours and dazzling light impressed many Antarctic explorers. Bellingshausen in March 1820, not only perceived the beauty of the phenomenon, but on one occasion affirmed its light saved his ship from the peril of an iceberg. He writes:
the southern aurora showed in all its magnificence and brightness …The whole vault of the heavens except 12° or 15° from the horizon was covered with bands of rainbow colour which, with the rapidity of lightning, traversed the sky in sinuous lines from south to north, shading off from colour to colour. This spectacle, surpassing all description, aroused in us the greatest wonder and saved us, it may be, from misfortune. When the snowclouds had cleared and the sea was lit up by the aurora, we observed that we were passing close to a huge iceberg to leeward: we considered ourselves fortunate not to have run into it.
