Augusts, 1900.] 



SCIENCE, 



181 



sun on the morning of the eclipse. The 

 sun was unusually steady, and we succeeded 

 in obtaining contacts that were quite satis- 

 factory. 



M. B. Snyder. I would like to call at- 

 tention to the prominence on the southwest 

 corner of one of the plates. I observed it 

 visually, and was puzzled by the peculiar 

 extension of that prominence. There was 

 a decided change in its character. At the 

 top there was a gradual fading of the promi- 

 nence and the corona ; and this is brought 

 out by the photographs shown. 



Ormond Stone. In the observation of 

 contacts it seems to me that there is a dif- 

 ferent way from the usual way, and which 

 is preferable to it. The method used by 

 myself in the eclipse of 1878 was used by 

 Mr. Morgan at the present eclipse, at my 

 station. I am not aware that it has been 

 used elsewhere. It gets rid of the difficulty 

 which arises from the fact that, especially 

 at the first contact, we recognize the con- 

 tact by an indentation. In other words, 

 we do not observe the first contact at all, 

 but we recognize as the first contact a time 

 which is not the first contact. The method 

 which we used was this : A divided scale 

 was placed in the field of the telescope, 

 with 20 divisions on each side, with every 

 fifth division a little longer. This was 

 placed at the proper angle to correspond 

 with the diurnal motion, and carefully 

 focused. "When the indentation in the 

 sun's edge had the length of one division a 

 record was made ; when it had reached the 

 length of two divisions another record was 

 made and so on through. By examining 

 the report of the eclipse of 1878 you will 

 see how closely the different results agreed. 

 The observations of the present eclipse 

 have not been reduced, but it seems to me 

 that some such method as I have described 

 is far preferable to the method of noting the 

 time when the indentation is large enough 

 to be fairly visible. 



Edgar Frisby. The observation of the 

 first contact involves the knowledge of about 

 the position where the contact will occur. 

 Of course it is always a little late, but when 

 the observer knows the position and is look- 

 ing very closely, the error must be very 

 small. We should expect the last contact to 

 be very close ; but I have found, from the 

 experience of three or four observers, that 

 the agreement was not so close as in the 

 first contact. It seems after all to be more 

 difficult to note the exact time of the last 

 contact than of the first. 



A Member. With reference to the re- 

 marks of Professor Upton, I may say that 

 I had charge of the camera, attached to 

 which was a visual telescope so that we 

 should be able to know just when to get 

 the flashes. The time of the first flash was 

 successful, and I made the exposure and 

 got a number of bright lines. The second 

 exposure was made after about ten sec- 

 onds, during the totality, and it partially 

 showed the bright lines. The chromospheric 

 rings were not well shown because we 

 had no driving clock. The attempt to get 

 the flash at the last contact was not success- 

 ful in consequence of the shortening of the 

 time of exposure. After this I made an 

 exposure of 10 seconds every minute, and 

 several plates showed a continuous spec- 

 trum. One minute after the third contact 

 the lines were beautifully shown. The 

 cause of the apparent continuous spectrum 

 was perhaps the fact that the background 

 was not sufficiently bright to show dark 

 lines. Possibly they were all there but not 

 thoroughly brought out. 



M. B. Snyder. You will remember that 

 a year ago I called attention to the use of 

 the phonograph as a means of recording the 

 time. During this eclipse I have actually 

 tried the phonograph, with results quite 

 satisfactory. We concluded that we might 

 observe the shadow bands, and erecting a 

 screen directly opposite to the sun we ob- 



