ABOUT ECLIPSES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 88, 2 June 1911, Page 6

ABOUT ECLIPSES.

The Rev. Father. Cortie, who led the recent British expedition to Vavau'to observe the eclipse of th.c snu, delivered a lectureupon eclipses g?nejally in Sydney the other .flight. Father Cortie, whoso lecture was illustrated with magic. lantern slides, first showed n picture of the sun, , a great white circle dotted with black spots—sunspots. These, he explained, are metals 1 erupted from the sun ; they are really dazzling bright, only tnc sun behind them is so much brighter that they look dark by contrast. Many of these- spots had been drawn at Stonyhurst. Some of them were bigger than the earth itself. Father Corties showed pictures of hydrogen and calcium flames, shot out from the sun’s surface, as far, some of them, as the earth is from the moon. Flames might ho driven, out, ho said, at the rate of over seventy miles a second. Ho explained how the moon is just'large enough to shut off from us the face of tho sun, so that in an eclipse wo can only see the light round the sun’s rim, If it were not for that, we should not ho able to ohserve'the sun’s corona ; it only shows up against the darkness of tho eclipse '1 lie lecturer then showed, by means a: a disc of cardboard passed slowly across a magic lantern slide, the phenomena of an eclipse This was followed by' pictures of different types of corona; including one which lie had him self taken in Spain. Tho streamers of the'corona were probably connected, he said, not with sun-spots, but with the solar prominences—bursts of flame, of which these streamers wore a further extension. He showed by diagrams how an eclipse is visible only to that small section of earth which lies opposite it. An eclipse occurs only every IB years 11 1-3 days, and is visible each time over a 'different area. Tin’s eclipse was visible across tho stretch of the earth’s siu-faco between Bcrrnagui (hut there the sun was too low, and the weather was cloudy) and Panama. Vavail iVis- -chosen 'as the most convenient plugc to sec it from. Tho lecturer then showed pictures of his own cnlIdgd,; Stonylnnst. This, and a reference to the success, of tho Australian expedition, brought loud applause. The siesmograph at Stonymust, ho said, was not so line as that ab PJvciTiow (more applause), nor had tljcs observers so able as Father Pigot, of Rivcrviciv. (Anninuse still louder).