ONLY TWO ECLIPSES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23542, 30 December 1939, Page 8

ONLY TWO ECLIPSES

MINIMUM NUMBER IN 1940 TRANSIT OF MERCURY Tho year 1940 will be a poor one for eclipses, so far as New Zealand is concerned. The minimum number possible, two eclipses, will occur during tho coming 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 tho total duration of obscuration will be about four minutes. As some compensation for the fact that neither of these phenomena will be visible in Now Zealand, a transit of tho planet Mercury across the face of the sun on November 11 will be visible in all stages from the Dominion. Tho last occasion on which such a transit occurred was in 1927, and there will not be another until tho 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, 1769, and tho incident lives in the names Mercury Bay, Red Mercury and Great Mercury Islands, which the famous navigator bestowed upon portions of tho east coast of Hauraki Peninsula.