THE SUN'S SECRETS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 183, 4 August 1932, Page 9

THE SUN'S SECRETS.

WHAT WILL AUGUST'S ECLIPSE TELL?

ASTRONOMICAL PREPARATION

MYSTERY OP THE CORONA.

(By a Special Correspondent.) PHILADELPHIA, June 30.

Yes, even the students of the heavens admit there's much yet to be learned about the universe.

In fact, they could fire questions of the above type at themselves for minutes on end and get for answers either: "1 don't know" or "Ask me another."

But some of these tougli problems may move a bit closer to solution after the total solar eclipse scheduled as the chief attraction for New England and eastern Canada tourists this summer. This most spectacular of Nature's wonders will occur on August 31, casting a 100-mile-wide shadow from south of Hudson Bay, over Quebec and Montreal, down across north-eastern Vermont, over New Hampshire and south-western Maine, the north-eastern corner of Massachusetts and Cape Cod.

A grey veteran of eclipse "shooters," Dr. John A. Miller, of Swarthmore College, who will head one of the scientific groups to photograph the eclipse, explained how the study of the distribution of matter in the sun's corona on this occasion may eventually lead to things of broad significance.

"Since the corona, as observed during different eclipses, is never the same shape," lie said, "we must conclude that the stun" of which it is made is in motion. Tf we could determine what causes that motion we would know more about what contribute to the life and light of the sun itself. "And since the sun is a star, we wotild then have more knowledge of the composition of the stars and what makes them shine, as well as a better understanding of the fundamental constitution of all matter." , This will be the eighth eclipse Dr. Miller has seen. He and his party will, locate at Fryeburg, Me., to "shoot' it. I

An Eighty-five Foot Camera. A few miles away, at Conway, N.H., the Franklin Institute group, headed by James Stokley, will . set up their instruments. These will include an 85ft camera, the longest to be used in an eclipse expedition since 1900, when the Smithsonian Institution employed one 125 ft long.

More than a score of other scientific parties from this and foreign countries, including Japan and Soviet Russia, will travel thousands of miles to New England and Canada just to focus their instruments and their eyes for one minute and thirty-nine seconds on a darkened sun.

But the phenomenon is said to be the most spectacular of Nature's entire col-1 lection of strange and beautiful eights. Thousands of tourists and vacationists are planning their trips in order that they may gaze—if the weather is not cloudy—upon that mysterious layer of the sun's atmosphere known as the corona, with its pearl and scarlet hues.

Dr. Miller pointed out that scientists really know comparatively little about the corona, how it got there, why it stays and how it acts.

"We do not, for example," he said, "know why it is not drawn in closer to the sun itself by the sun's gravity. And of its chemical make-up we do not know as much as we do about the siin's composition."

Here enters the mysterious substance "noronium," first noticed in 1869, but never since satisfactorily explained. It gives about 16 lines in the spectrum, from ultra violet to red, and the brightest of its lines is a green one. "Theoretical chemistry and the atomic theory indicate that coronium is not a new element, as at first believed," Dr. Miller said, "and it may be another form of an element we already know, such as oxygen, although the question is by no means answered definitely." I

Incidentally, it is pointed out by Mr. I Stoklev, this' is the last pood total solar j eclipse" to be visible in this country for I the next 39 years. Ou March 7. 1970, you 1 may see one* by travelling to Florida, for ' the shadow of that eclipse will pass over the Gulf of Mexico and Florida. On Mayj 30 1984, the United States will see its] next one, which will start in Texas and! cross the country to Maryland. | Meanwhile, however, several "dawn eclipses" are scheduled for this country. The sun will rise eclipsed on August 9. 19-45. Mr. Stokley said, being visible in Montana and Western Canada. I

A similar sunrise eclipse will be seer, in North Carolina on Novembeer 1, 1951 and will then pass out into the Atlantic and on June 30, 1954, residents o

Nebraska will see a sunrise eclipse whici will move northward. October 2, 10."> i. will find a dawn eclipse visible in Lou. Island.

All of these early morning affairs, M Stockley points out, will be too brio and too dimmed by the thickness of Hi earth's atmosphere to be of much valui scientifically.—(N.A.N. A.)