Edmund Halley and the Aurora

Edmund Halley is best known for calculating the periodicity of Halley’s Comet, but he also made significant contributions to our early understanding of Space Weather.  The Great Auroral Display of March 1716 presented Halley the opportunity to study the aurora in detail and to speculate about its nature and origins.  Halley’s published article presented to the world some unique and surprisingly accurate (for the time) insights into what the aurora really is.