December 1, 1897.] 



KNOWLEDGE. 



287 



Sir Norman Lockyer and his assistants, Mr. A. Fowler, 

 F.R.A.S., and Mr. W. J. S. Lockyer, Ph.D. By sailing 

 from England to Colombo, and by securing there a man-of- 

 ■war to take his expedition to the Eatnagiri coast. Sir 

 Norman Lockyer at once avoids the troublesome quarantine 

 restrictions imposed on those who leave Bombay and 

 obtains the services of the gunboat crew in his observations. 

 The services of men to whom promptitude and method have 

 become a second nature are of the utmost assistance in the 

 preparations and observations of an eclipse. 



The main object of Sir Norman Lockyer's expedition is 

 to photograph the spectra of the solar surroundings with 

 prismatic cameras of six and nine inches aperture, and with 

 an integrating spectroscope having two three-inch prisms of 

 sixty degrees. An exposure of sixty seconds will bs given 

 with the integrating spectroscope, and exposures of varyiug 

 periods with the objective prisms. Great success attended 

 the use of such instruments in the expeditions of Mr. 

 Fowler and Mr. Albert Taylor of 1893, and with a similar 

 instrument at Novaya Zemlaia in 1896 Mr. Shackleton 

 succeeded for the first time in photographing the " flash." 

 Without doubt, the officers and crew of the gunboat will 

 be also trained to make drawings, read thermometers, 

 note the colours of the landscape, and other phenomena 

 attendant on the eclipse. 



Unhappily Her Majesty's ships are only in their element 

 when at sea, and all the other expeditions which select 

 inland stations cannot avail themselves of the services of 

 gunboat or crew. The South ]\Iahratta Railway, from 

 Poona to Belgaum, crosses the central line of eclipse near 

 the villages of Targaon, Masur, and Karad. At the second 

 of these villages — Masur — in east longitude 74" 8' 51", and 

 north latitude 17° 24' 15'' — the members of the expedition 

 sent out by the British Astronomical Association hope to 

 encamp. The duration of the total phase is here two 

 minutes eight seconds, and the cloud statistics give a mean 



Shadow Track of Solar Eclipse, Janiuiry, 189S. 



daily amount of about 1-2. A low range of highlands lie 

 to the east of the village, upon which the camp will probably 

 be pitched. This expedition is by no means as large as 

 that sent out last year to Norway, but it nevertheless 

 testifies to the energy and zeal of the members of the 

 Association when the length and expense of the journey 

 are taken into consideration, and the difficulties which any 

 scientific expedition must undergo at this present time in 

 India. 



Of its members Jlr. Thwaites, Mr. Evershed, and Mr. 

 and Mrs. Maunder leave England on December 8th, and 

 on arriving in India select the actual site for the Associa- 

 tion's camp. Mr. Thwaites will photograph the corona 

 with a four and a quarter inch Cooke triple object glass. 

 Its focal length is about six feet and gives a diameter 

 of the sun's image of about 0-0 inch. Mr. Evershed's 

 programme is a large one. Two prisms each of sixty 

 degrees angle, and with a combined deviation of eighty 

 degrees, will be mounted before a two-inch object glass 

 for varying exposures on the corona. An exposure 

 during the whole of totality will also be made with a 

 slit spectroscope containing two quartz prisms of angles 

 sixty degrees and thirty degrees respectively. In addition, 

 with a direct-vision spectroscope mounted on a three and 

 a quarter inch equatorial, he will examine the prominence 

 spectrum before and after totality, and will determine the 

 moment of " flash." 



Mr. and Mrs. Maunder's instruments consist of two 

 cameras with object glasses of two and a half and one and 

 a half inches, and giving images of nine-tenths and one- 

 tenth of an inch respectively. Besides these there are two 

 " Fowler " opera-glasses for direct vision of the coronal 

 spectrum and the chromospheric " flash." Amongst other 

 probable members of the party may be mentioned Capt. 

 Molesworth, E.E., and Mr. Henry Cousens, Superintendent 

 of the Archipological Survey of India. 



The bulk of the members of the British Astronomical 

 Association will arrive in India at a later date. Of these 

 the Bev. J. M. Bacon introduces an entirely new weapon 

 into the equipment of an eclipse expedition, in a kinemato- 

 graph. This is a most powerful one, furnished and adjusted 

 by Mr. Nevil Maskelyne — whose name has an historic 

 connection with astronomy — and will furnish five or six 

 photographs per second. Should this instrument give 

 successful results the most complete series of photographs 

 ever procured in an eclipse will be obtained, and should 

 throw invaluable light on the question of stability or 

 change in the corona. 



At Karad, a few miles from Masur, will probably be the 

 station of Dr. Michie Smith, the Director of the Govern- 

 ment of India Observatory at Madras. He is preparing 

 to photograph tbe corona with a forty-feet telescope of 

 six inches aperture, using a polar siderostat, and he will 

 also probably use some slit spectroscopes. 



On the Great Indian Peninsular Riilway line from 

 Poona to Madras there will probably be encamped one or 

 two parties. Prominent among these is the expedition 

 organized by Prof. K. D. Naegamvala, Curator of 

 the Observatory at Poona, whose principal instru- 

 ment is a six-inch Taylor-Cooke achromatic lens 

 with an objective prism of forty-live degrees angle 

 and six by eight inches face. This will be fed by 

 a twelve-inch ca4ostat. In addition there will be a 

 large single-prism slit spectroscope three inches in aperture 

 used in connection with an eight-inch lens and twelve- 

 inch siderostat ; an objective prism of spar and quartz of 

 two-inch aperture ; an integrating spectroscope of small size 

 for the spectrum of the total radiation from the eclipsed sun. 

 ^'everal photographs of the corona and direct visital observa- 

 tions of the meteorological phenomena will also be taken. 



Entering the Central Provinces, the station of the second 

 official expedition sent out by the Joint Eclipse Committee 

 is at Pulgaon, a small village situated on the railway line 

 from Bombay to Nagpur. Here Mr. Newall proposes to 

 use a large slit spectroscope with two prisms of sixty-two 

 degrees, in the attempt to determine the speed of rotation 

 of tbe corona by the relative displacements of its lines as 

 observed east and west of the sun. Mr. Newall does not 



