CORONA AND RED CLOUDS IN ECLIPSES 61 



British Envoy, wrote that very day : " The sun was 

 totally darkened for 4 J minutes of time ; a fixed star 

 and a planet appeared very bright; and his getting 

 out of the eclipse was preceded by a blood-red streak 

 of light, from its left limb; which continued not 

 longer than 6 or 7 seconds of time; 1 then part of 

 the sun's disk appeared, all of a sudden, bright as 

 Venus was ever seen in the night ; nay, brighter, and 

 in that very instant gave a light and shadow to things, 

 as strong as moonlight uses to do," Flamsteed adds 

 his own comment on this strange story : " The Captain 

 is set down as the first man ever heard of that took 

 notice of a red streak of light preceding the emersion 

 of the sun's body from a total eclipse. And I take 

 notice of it to you, because it infers that the moon 

 has an atmosphere; and its short continuance of 

 only 6 or 7 seconds of time, tells us that its height 

 is not more than the 5 or 6 hundredth part of her 

 diameter" that is, about four miles. 



At Geneva the same eclipse was viewed by a friend 

 of Sir Isaac Newton, Facio Duillier, who, apparently, 

 did not see the " blood-red streak," but gives a good 

 description of the Crown, or as it is now called, the 

 Corona. " The clouds," he says, " did change of a 

 sudden their colour, and became red, and then of a 

 pale violet. There was seen, during the whole time 

 of the total immersion, a whiteness, which did seem 

 to break out from behind the moon, and to encom- 

 pass it on all sides equally. The same whiteness was 

 but little determined, in its outward side, and was 



1 In the total eclipse of the present year there was seen "a brilliant 

 display of carmine-coloured prominences extending over an arc of at 

 least 60 deg." (Times, June 1, 1900, p. 10). 



