Oct. 24, 1878] 



NATURE 



663 



both Houses on this question, the Council of the British 

 Association may be able to do a work of great national 

 importance by pointing out clearly and definitely what 

 must be done, and by the publication of an annual 

 report on the progress made preventing the subject again 

 being allowed to drop. 



STELLAR OBJECTS SEEN DURING THE 

 ECLIPSE OF 1869 



IT will be remembered by the reader who has interested 

 himself in the published reports of observations of 

 recent total eclipses of the sun, that during the totality on 

 August 7, 1869, at a point in Iowa, called St. Paul's 

 Junction, several observers attached to a party organised 

 by Mr. W. S. Gilman, of New York, remarked below the 

 sun what they termed "a little brilliant," and that one of 

 the number using a small telescope, reported having seen 

 just before the sun disappeared and as he came out again 

 a minute crescent, in a similar direction from the moon. 

 Commodore Sands, then Superintendent of the Naval 

 Observatory, Washington, expressed his regret that these 

 objects should not have been seen by Mr. Gilman him- 

 self, who had experience of the use of the telescope and 

 was using a larger instrument than the others who had 

 optical aid — but his " plan of operations " did not permit 

 of it. The facts are thus stated : — A few moments after 

 the corona formed, a small but exceedingly bright point, 

 like a star, was noted independently by four of the party, 

 two of whom it is mentioned v/ere observing without 

 telescopes ; it appeared near the limits of the corona, 

 below the moon's disc, and with one exception the ob- 

 servers located it a little to the right of an "anvil-shaped" 

 prominence, or "at about 230° from the north point, 

 reckoning by the east," and it is added that each of the 

 observers felt quite positive that what he saw was truly a 

 star. With respect to the small crescent Mr. Gilman 

 reports that about half a minute preceding totality another 

 member of the party, Mr. Vincent, came to him exclaim- 

 ing that he saw a miniature-crescent-shaped star under 

 the moon, and asking him to verify the observation, but, 

 interested in his own work, he did not at the moment do 

 so ; on Mr. Vincent returning more urgent than ever, 

 Mr. Gilman says he did look in a hurried manner but 

 saw nothing in the few seconds he gave to the search ; 

 he afterwards states, however, that he does not think he 

 looked so far away from the moon as the crescent was 

 located in a drawing made immediately after the eclipse 

 by Mr. Vincent ; in this drawing it was placed " at one 

 and a half times the moon's diameter from its limb, and 

 to the left of a perpendicular down to the horizon." Mr. 

 Gilman adds he could not connect this crescent with 

 the small star of the other observers, indeed Mr, Vincent 

 estimated the object seen by him at three times as 

 far removed from the moon's limb as the small star, 

 which would assign for the latter a distance of about 

 half a degree, corresponding very well to the expres- 

 sion used by the four observers who noted it, that it 

 was near the limits of the corona. Dr. B. A. Gould, 

 now Director of the Observatory at Cordoba, who ob- 

 served this eclipse at a different station, gave some atten- 

 tion to a search for any object near the sun which might 

 be an intra-Mercurial planet, and he states he saw the 



star TT Cancri, but did not meet with any other stellar 

 body. This star being at the time in a similar direction 

 from the moon' s centre, to "the little brilliant" of the 

 Iowa observers, there has been a pretty general opinion 

 that it was the object remarked by them, and, in conver- 

 sation with Dr. Gould several years since, I found 

 him tolerably well satisfied that he had thus sufficiently 

 explained their observations. But the discovery, or rather 

 discoveries, of Prof. Watson, lend a new interest to them, 

 and a more strict examination of the circumstances may 

 not be out of place here. The position of St. Paul's 

 Junction is stated to be in latitude 42° 47' 30" N., and 

 longitude 19° 5' 45" W. of Washington. The totality was 

 observed to commence at 5h. 48m. 4"6s., ending at 5h. 

 51m. 34s. M.T. at Washington, so that the middle occurred 

 at loh. 58m. 22s. M.T. at Greenwich, which agrees exactly 

 with a calculation made with the Nautical Almanac 

 elements. We will assume loh. 59m. G.M.T. as the 

 time to which the observations of the brilliant point 

 apply. Correcting the moon's place for the effect of 

 parallax, we find her apparent position at this time 

 to be in right ascension, 9h. iim. 267s., and north 

 declination 16° 13' 58"; her augmented semi-diameter 

 was 16' 37". We must assume that both star-like object 

 and crescent were on an angle of 230°, the latter one- 

 and-a-half times the moon' s diameter from her limb, and 

 the former at one-third of this distance, whence, referring 

 to the moon's centre, we have, for the crescent, Aa = 

 — 3m. 32s., AS = - 42'7, and for the bright little star, 

 Aa = - im. 46s., AS = — 2i'"4; and thus, 



R.A. Decl. 



h. m. s. o / 



Stellar object 9 9 41 + 15 52*6 



Crescent 9 7 55 + ^5 3i'2 



The former was therefore 28' and the latter 56' south of 

 the ecliptic. 



Now with regard to the star, the presence of which 

 has been supposed to explain the observation of the four 

 observers who noted "the little brilliant," there has 

 been some slight confusion. In a note inserted in the 

 last "Annual Report " of the Royal Astronomical Society 

 it is stated that the object seen "has been satisfactorily 

 identified as the star 77^ Cancri," which is assuredly a 

 mistake, tt', according to Argelander, is only a seventh 

 magnitude, which is hardly to be glimpsed with the most 

 acute sight in the darkest winter sky. For -n^ no doubt we 

 must read tt-, or 82 Cancri. But this star, also, is of a 

 degree of brightness wholly insufficient to allow of it 

 being possible to discern it at all so near the sun's place 

 without some optical aid in the still illuminated sky-ground 

 much less to be caught up as a brilliant point of light, 

 with the naked eye ; the " Durchmusterung " estimate is 

 5"8m., which is confirmed by the careful estimations of 

 the second Radchffe Catalogue, where we find it rated 

 5'9m., or, -in round magnitudes, a sixth. It should be 

 mentioned that the apparent place of 82 Cancri was in 

 right ascension 9h. 7m. 59'Ss., declination 15° 28' 56", 

 agreeing nearly with that we have found for the minute 

 crescent, but 33' from the small star. It appears pro- 

 bable, in view of Prof. Watson's discovery, that Dr. 

 Gould may have mistaken an intra-Mercurial planet for 

 TT* Cancri, and if the statements of the four observers at 

 St. Paul's Junction (one of them, by the way, a lady) are 

 accepted, it can hardly be doubted that they also were 



