ECLIPSE OF THE SUN.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXI, 11 January 1922, Page 2

ECLIPSE OF THE SUN.

THEORY OF RELATIVITY. RESEARCH EXPEDITION. LONDON, January 9. Mr H. S. Jones, Chief Assistant at Greenwich Observatory, with M. Melotte, the discoverer of Jupiter’s eighth satellite, leaves at the end of the month for Christmas Island to observe the eclipse of the sun in September, also to carry out tests in regard to Einstein’s theory of relativity. There is a possibility that a German-Dutch expedition accompanied by Einstein will also go. [Regarding the above, the “Daily Mail of November 17, to hand yesterday, has the following.] Two members of the staff of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, will leave this country in February next to observe a total eclipse of the sun, which will not take place until next September. They will carry with them a hut ana scientific equipment, all of which is in readiness at Greenwich. Mr H. Spenser Jones, chief assistant to the Astronomer Royal, will lead the expedition. With him will be Mr P. J. Melotte, an astronomical photographer. Christmas Island, eleven degrees south of the equator, a tiny phosphate island south of Java, will bo the scene of their labours. For months the two astronomers will be occupied in testing their instruments and taking photographs of the heavens by night. The latter work will make an important link in the photographic survey ut sky and the measurement of stars upon which so much work has been done in recent years. As seen from Christmas Island, the period of total eclipse will last three and a half to four minutes. In this i time six photographs will be taken. The main object of the British expedition is to obtain photographs of stars near the sun at the moment of total eclipse, that being the only time when such photographs can be taken. TESTING EINSTEIN. A comparison of eclipse photographs with similar photographs taken when the sun is not in the same region of the heavens -may show that “bending’ of light which lies at the bottom of the Einstein theory. The British expedition will not be concerned with questions of the corona, which will be dealt with by other expeditions, notably the United States expedition to Western Australia. For the first time British astronomers are taking with them a 13-inch astrographic telescope by means of which direct images can be taken. In previous expeditions the pictures have been taken by reflection in a flat mirror, hut this method has proved uncertain in tropical climates.