BRIGHTNESS OF THE CORONA. 131 



there was no difficulty about reading anything ; and the seconds 

 divisions on the face of the deck watch could be easily seen." 



The following sentence in his notebook written at the time 

 may also be worth extracting ; though the photographs actually 

 showed longer extensions than the writer had deemed possible 

 under the circumstances : 



" I fear the amount of light in the sky was too great for 

 there to be much hope of getting anything from long exposures 

 or for tracing the streamers for any great distance on the 

 photographs." 



Mr. J. Willoughby Meares reported as follows : 



" The brightness of the inner corona was far too intense to 

 be compared in any way with the full moon, area for area. 



" Even the streamers were brighter than the full moon. 

 They appeared to run in straight radial rays over a fainter 

 substratum, and it was not possible to define exactly where 

 they ended, as they grew gradually more like the sky and then 

 merged into it. 



" The general brightness of the eclipse was certainly as great 

 as the light of two if not three full moons. For (i.) only Venus 

 was visible, (ii.) It was easy to read small print at the normal 

 distance from the eye. (iii.) There w^as little more difficulty in 

 drawing than in ordinary daylight. Venus was seen 10 minutes 

 before totality and far longer afterwards." 



With regard to the visibility of stars during the eclipse, Mr. 

 T. W. Backhouse reports that a friend of his looked specially for 

 stars during totality and saw but three Mercury, Venus, and 

 Altair : the latter was quite bright, so he has no doubt much 

 fainter ones would have been seen had he had time to look 

 carefully. Mercury was quite plain, he says, like a fourth- 

 magnitude star at night. 



Mr. Backhouse's own impression as to the degree of darkness 

 of the sky was that it was far brighter than the full moon. 



