ASTRONOMY. PANS) 
reached was apparently as far off as ever. The observer was quite disheartened 
and discouraged, and about ready to give up in despair. In such a frame of 
mind, and quite willing to give it up as a bad job, suddenly and unexpectedly the 
false moon, for some reason or other, changed its position slightly, so that ap- 
parently its surface and the surface of the object-glass were no longer parallel to 
each other. Whether the lack of parallelism was a fact or not cannot now be 
determined. The effect produced was that the barrel of the telescope seemed to 
be completely filled with absolute darkness, the brassy streamers vanished, and 
along the upper right-hand limb of the false moon appeared, in all their beauty 
and soft light, the coronal streamers. There was no mistaking the vision. It 
was the genuine corona itself; a thing of beauty, and a glorious recompense for 
the time and Jabor that had been expended. 
An attempt to change the position of the telescope so as to hold the sun in the 
field resulted in destroying the vision, and the coronal streamers disappeared 
from view. The following is a facsimile of a hand-made drawing of the corona, 
as seen on the afternoon of May 3, 1899. It is not a complete coronal form, for 
the reason that the cardboard disk extended beyond the limb of the sun, and pre- 
vented a view of the streamers other than as represented. 
Several cardboard disks, one six inches in diameter, one seven and another 
eight inches in diameter were made, and used at varying distances. A great 
many obstacles had to be met and surmounted in preparing for the work, and 
great care had to be exercised in handling the apparatus. The telescope used was 
mounted on a tripod, and was exposed to the action of the wind. There was no 
driving-clock attachment; so that every movement had to be made by the ob- 
server, thus rendering the labor so much the more difficult. Other observations 
were taken in May and in June, but, on account of ill health, the observations 
had to be suspended during the summer, and there has been no opportunity 
since to resume them. 
But that the corona of the sun was seen on the 3d of May, 1899, a day upon 
which there was no eclipse of the sun, either partial or total, can scarcely admit 
of doubt. There is a possibility that it may have been a vision of something 
else —an optical illusion, an “ignis fatuus,’’ or a dream. 
At the moment when the picture was sketched, the ‘‘apparition’’ was situ- 
ated in the vicinity of one of the poles of the sun, and not in the plane of the 
sun’s equator; and so clear and well defined was the shape, and so different from 
all other appearances, that the conclusion reached by the observer was that it 
was the corona itself. To be sure, he may have been mistaken, but he thinks 
not, and it is unfortunate that the observation of May 3 has not as yet been cor- 
roborated by other observations. The work will be resumed in the near future. 
The difficulty in the case consists not in making an artificial moon, attaching 
it to a telescope, and locating it at a proper distance from the object-glass, 
but in flooding the barrel of the telescope with absolute darkness. When that 
is done, all other difficulties will seem but trifles and will vanish at once. The 
light of the sun that fills the surrounding atmosphere is the great foe to anything 
like success, and seems to bid defiance to every attempt. Shut out that light, 
exclude it entirely from the interior of the telescope by means of a conical hood 
that will extend some distance over the barrel of the telescope and forward as 
far, perhaps as the false moon, or further, and with the conveniences and appli- 
ances of a modern observatory, the result may be safely predicted—the corona 
will be made visible. 
In conclusion, if the corona was seen upon the day mentioned, when there 
was no eclipse of the sun, as described in the foregoing, I think I am justified 
