124 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



to astronomers the recent eclipse observations have 

 supplied most interesting information. 



Let us in the first place consider the actual 

 appearance of this object as seen under the favourable 

 circumstances of the late eclipse. The following de- 

 scription is taken from a series of letters which appeared 

 in the columns of the Daily Neius. 'There in the 

 leaden-coloured utterly cloudless sky,' he writes, * shone 

 out the eclipsed sun ! a worthy sight for gods and men. 

 There, rigid in the heavens, was what struck everybody 

 as a decoration one that emperors might fight for 

 a thousand times more beautiful than the Star of India 

 (even where we are now) a picture of surpassing love- 

 liness, and giving one the idea of serenity among all the 

 activity that was going on below ; shining with a sheen 

 as of silver essence, built up of rays almost symmetrically 

 arranged round a bright ring, above and below with a 

 marked absence of them right and left, the rays being 

 composed of sharp radial lines, separated by furrows of 

 markedly less brilliancy.' 



It is very interesting to notice the greater extension 

 of the corona above and below. For at Bekul, where 

 the observations were made, the sun'was close to the 

 horizon, and his equatorial zone was nearly upright or 

 vertical, so that the observation shows that the exten- 

 sion of the radiated corona is greatest opposite the sun's 

 equatorial regions. It is worthy of notice that Father 

 Secchi had considered this fact to be apparent in the 

 photographs which he obtained during the eclipse of 

 the sun in 1860. 



