Plate 57.
WAVED CIRRO-STRATUS.
(Cirro-stratus Undatus.)
The conclusions at which we have arrived are simple, and there is little room for doubt as to their main correctness, but there are numerous minute features presented by these beautiful cloud patterns which await interpretation, and they reveal complicated oscillatory movements in the air which are difficult to account for, whether we seek their originating causes or the mechanics of their motions.
CHAPTER IX
CLOUD ALTITUDES
During an extended experience of cloud photography, it was found that it was quite possible to get pictures which showed the cloud detail even when the sun was in the field of view. Sometimes the solar image was reversed, but if the exposure was very short this was not the case. In such photographs the structure of the cloud was exceedingly clear and sharply defined quite close to the sun. Indeed, the intense illumination seemed to reveal minute details of internal arrangement which could not be detected in similar clouds some distance away.
The methods which had been employed for the measurement of cloud altitudes elsewhere have already been briefly referred to. Some of them required two observers, who were equally responsible, each of them having to direct his apparatus or camera to the same point of the cloud, and to record the exact direction in which the instrument was pointed. The instruments, if accurate, were costly, and there were many opportunities for error in reading the graduated circles which gave the directions. Moreover, in most of these methods the two observers were connected by telephone, and had to agree on the exact point towards which their instruments should be directed; either the exact point of the cloud, or the precise direction as shown by the mounting of the camera or other instrument. At Kew some of these sources of error were avoided by fixing the two cameras with the axes of the lenses and centres of the plates in a vertical position and exposing the two plates simultaneously. The Kew observations were not long continued, and for some years the only measurements in progress were those carried out abroad, particularly at the Blue Hill Observatory and at Upsala.
The experience gained in photographing clouds in order to record their forms suggested a way in which many of the sources of error in previous measurements of altitude could be avoided, especially by simplifying and reducing the operations at the moment of making the observation.