84 ON THE TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE SUN, JULY, 1851. [15 



where the Sun was about to reappear. On account of the clouds, I felt 

 no inconvenience in observing the reappearance without the intervention of 

 a dark glass. As the first ray of the Sun appeared the corona vanished, 

 and at the same moment the prominence seemed suddenly to contract and 

 change its form, the point of it disappearing and the remaining part be- 

 coming detached from the limb of the Moon. In about a second more 

 the whole had vanished. I did not notice any interruption to the con- 

 tinuity of the Sun's limb in its reappearance, like that with which I had 

 been struck when it disappeared, the Moon's western limb being apparently 

 much more regular than the eastern. 



The clouds now grew rapidly thicker, and completely hid the Sun from 

 view before the end of the eclipse. 



At the small observatory the eclipse was observed by Lieutenants Smith 

 and Hjorth, two officers of the Norwegian Royal Navy, and also by the 

 well-known French traveller, M. D'Abbadie. Lieut. Smith, who was specially 

 charged by Professor Hansteen with the determination of the time, found 

 the following results : 



h. m. s. 



Beginning of the Eclipse ... 2 41 40'3 Mean Time at the Observatory. 

 Beginning of the Totality... 3 44 52'3 ,, ,, ,, 



End of Totality 3 48 17'8 



The end of the eclipse could not be observed. 



According to Professor Hansteen, the longitude of the Observatory is 

 2 m 39 8- 3 west of Christiania, or 40 m 15 s '5 east of Greenwich, and its latitude 

 58 59' 3 3". 9 north. 



Lieut. Hjorth compares the appearance of the prominence to that of 

 the flame of a candle acted on by the blowpipe. 



Besides this prominence, which was the only one seen by me, Lieut. 

 Hjorth observed two much smaller ones to spring up a little before the 

 end of the totality, on the same side of the Moon as the former, one 

 being above and the other below it. 



Mr Liveing, who observed the eclipse from the same spot with myself, 

 has kindly communicated the following observations, taken with the naked 

 eye. 



