ONLY TWO ECLIPSES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20136, 4 January 1940, Page 12

ONLY TWO ECLIPSES

MINIMUM NUMBER IN 1940 TRANSIT OF MERCURY The year 1940 will be a poor one for eclipses, so far as Neyv Zealand Is concerned. The minimum number possible, two eclipses, will occur during the coining year, and both of these will be solar ones. An annular eclipse which will occur on April .7 will be visible only in America, while the second, a total solar eclipse, will be equally visible from South America and the southern tip of Africa, in both of which places the total duration of obscuration will be about four minutes. As .some compensation for the fact that neither of these phenomena will be visible in New Zealand, a transit of the planet Mercury across the face of the sun on November 11 will be visible in all stages from the Dominion. The last occasion on which such a transit occurred was in 1927, and there' will not be another until the year 1953.

In centennial year it is interesting to recall that the first European astronomical observation conducted in New Zealand was an observation of a transit of Mercury made by Captain Cook on the occasion of his first visit to these shores in November, 17G9, md tlie incident lives in the names Mercury Bay. Red Mercury and Great Mercury Islands, which the famous navigator bestowed upon portions of the east coast of Hauraki Peninsula.