Unusual rainbows as auroral candidates: Another point of view

Several auroral events that occurred in the past have not been cataloged as such due to the fact that they were described in the historical sources with different terminologies. Hayakawa et al. (2016, PASJ, 68, 33) have reviewed historical Oriental chronicles and proposed the terms “unusual rainbow” and “white rainbow” as candidates for auroras. In this work, we present three events that took place in the 18th century in two different settings (the Iberian Peninsula and Brazil) that were originally described with similar definitions or wording to that used by the Oriental chronicles, despite the inherent differences in terms associated with Oriental and Latin languages. We show that these terms are indeed applicable to the three case studies from Europe and South America. Thus, the auroral catalogs available can be extended to Occidental sources using this new terminology.