SOME RECENT ASTRONOMICAL EVENTS. 165 



Our chief anxiety throughout our preparations was in regard to the 

 weather, and for the first two or three weeks we were under great 

 despondency, for the days Avere cloudy almost without exception, and 

 at the hour when the eclipse would be total there was scarcely a day 

 in April when the observations would have been successful. With 

 May, however, our hopes were raised, for while the days were scarcely 

 ever fair throughout, yet during the hour of totalit}^, according to 

 Professor Barnard's count, about two-thirds of the days in May would 

 have been successful eclipse days. Cloudy nights, however, made it 

 very difficult to adjust the apparatus, but by taking advantage of what 

 slight opportunities occurred we were able to get plenty of focus 

 plates by means of which we were assured that the apparatus was in 

 good working order. 



On May 17 the sky was overcast and it rained heavily, but we hoped 

 for better weather for the 18th, thinking that so severe a storm meant 

 a speedy clearing, and sure enough on the morning of the 18th the sun 

 broke through the clouds shortly after his rising, and the sky became 

 of a clearness which we never experienced during all our stay there. 

 This continued until after 10 o'clock, when thin, hazy clouds began 

 to form slowly, leaving a perfectly clear belt about the horizon. The 

 first contact came with no very prejudicial degree of cloudiness, but 

 after that it grew steadily thicker, leaving still a clear belt around the 

 horizon, and when the crucial moments of totality occurred the posi- 

 tion of the sun could but indistinctly be discerned. Glimpses of the 

 inner corona and prominences could be seen, with the planets Venus 

 and Mercury, but all more like a lantern shining through a thick fog 

 than like anything lit for astronomical observations. It seemed wholly 

 useless to go through the programme; yet, for the sake of having some- 

 thing to show that we had been at an eclipse, we exposed all the intra- 

 mercurial planet plates; but I omitted the bolornetric observations 

 wholly, as they could not possibly lead to trustworthy results. I was 

 struck with the amount of the general illumination. The belt of 

 totality was 150 miles wide and we were within less than 30 miles of its 

 center, so that there was a total eclipse belt of nearly 50 miles outside 

 of us, and I had expected a degree of darkness comparable almost with 

 night, but was astonished to perceive that in mid-totality the day was 

 no darker than it often is during a heavy fall of rain. 



We were a sorry party after the eclipse as we watched the sky again 

 clear and give us what we had so longed for before — a tine afternoon 

 and night. Professor Barnard, especially, was almost broken hearted, 

 for no one had an apparatus so absolutely perfect for its use as he, and 

 no one had drilled himself to such a state of dexterity as he, and no 

 one, I suppose, will ever obtain an eclipse photograph which will sur- 

 pass what he would with clear sky have obtained with his long expo- 

 sure on the 40-inch square plate. To make his discouragement still 



