FOR TWO MINUTES

Evening Star, Issue 22276, 29 February 1936, Page 1

FOR TWO MINUTES

ASTRONOMERS' JOURNEY 1 Sis men from Georgetown Univer- ’ sity and the National Geographic I Society will travel half-way around the ’ world to Soviet Russia to view the - two and a-half minute total eclipse > of the sun on June 19, 1936, it was ; announced at \Vashington (says the ’ ‘ Christian Science Monitor.’ ; “Even so brief an observation of r the sun is considered well worth while I by astronomers because’ it gives them. > a rare opportunity to study the sun’s i corona—a halo of , pearly ..light.. extend—- ’ ing hundreds of thousands* of, miles , outward from the sun but visible only, during ah eclipse wheh. the rest of the sun’s light is cut off,” the Geographio • Society explained. Headquarters' of the expedition will be established, near, Orenburg, pro-i ’ bably .at the village of. Sara, near. the line along .which, the; centre ,_of the , moon’s shadow’will tfayel during L the 1 eclipse. Orenburg'is about 775 miles south-west of Moscow. 1 The expedi* , tion, to be headed by Dr - Paul' A„ McNally, director of the Georgetown j College Observatory, will leave soma time in April and return, in July. , “Photographs taken, during .the 1 eclipse, timed with great , exactness, ■ will give astronomers a chance- to • ‘ hold a stop watch ’on the movements of the solar system and see ■if it is 1 running ou schedule,’ ” • the Geographic Society says. ' Movements ot . the sun, moon, and planets in relation to one another are predicted with extreme, accuracy by astronomers, .bub • the predictions can be checked only when two heavenly bodies pass each other. ' ~ , ’■ This eclipse, the first total eclipse e of the sun to be visible on earth since. ) that of February, 1934, will begin to ■ be visible at sufirisc in the Mediter- " ranean sea off the south-western coasts of the Grecian Peleponnesus. ihe moon’s shadow marking a path or - totality about fifty miles wide, will sweep in a direction north of easts across the Agean sea, Istanbul, and ; th« Black sea, will pass south of Rostov and Stalingrad, across Orenburg, ana over Omsk and Tomsk in Siberia. _. The Governments of both Soviet ‘ Russia and Japan have extended um- • tations to the scientific organisations of the world to send expeditions, ta their territories for observation of th« eclipse.