ECLIPSE OF SUN

Taranaki Daily News, 9 May 1930, Page 9

ECLIPSE OF SUN

CALIFORNIAN OBSERVATIONS.

SCIENTISTS IN AEROPLANES.

San Francisco, April 29

Extraordinarily clear aerial photographs of the'eclipse of the sun were obtained yesterday, thanks to a fierce wind which, at the critical moment, swept aside the curtain of black cloud. The moon, passing between the sun and the earth, cast a shadow half a mile wide along a path across the continent.

Speeding at 1200 miles an hour, the shadow swept in from the Pacific, touching the coastline just north of San Francisco. Then it travelled across the Sierra Mountains, through Idaho, across the south-east corner of Saskatchewan, touching Hudson’s Bay, and leaping into the Atlantic again from Northern Quebec.

An expedition of Lick Observatory scientists obtained good pictures of the eclipse in Northern California. Aeroplanes took the photographers to an altitude of 15,00.) feet out of reach of the clouds. •

Captain Stevens, a United States Army expert, was in one aeroplane hovering over the Northern California mountains, when he spied what he thought was a mountain 75 miles distant.

“This dark ridge appeared stationary,” he said, “but when wo sa‘w it approaching we found it was the moon’s shadow. It came slowly, then faster and faster, passing beneath its so rapidly that we could hardly kc p track of it. The shadow appeared luminous, with bluish-purple edges very clearly defined. A snowstorm was raging below the aeroplane at the moment of the eclipse, and the exhaust fumes from our engine .froze, leaving long, trailing etreaks in the sky.” .

In other, parts, of California scores of scientists obtained most comprehensive viewe. of the phenomenon