Connecticut western news., 1871-08-25
The Next Total Solar Eclipse.

Already the s scientific world is. astir with preparations to observe this grand phenomenon. It is a most fortunate thing for astronomy that this rare event occurs again just as the knowledge ob- tained from the recent eclipse exped1- tions has been garnered up and careful ly studied as starting point for future solar inquiries. Our knowledge of the great central luminary of our planetary system has within few years so rapidly increased that we need new and lm- proved appliances for vigorously push ing investigation. The central line of the next total solar eclipse will first meet the earth's surface in the Arabian Sea, and, entering on the western coast of India, will pass directly across one of the most important and populous parts of Hindostan in southeastern direction, where the sun will be about twenty de- grees above the horizon at the time of total obscuration. The duration of to- tality will be two minutes and quarter and the breadth of, the shadow. about seventy miles. Leaving the eastern coast of the Madras Presidency, the central line crosses Palk's Strait, the northern part of the island of Ceylon, thence continuing it's course over the southeastern point of Sumatra and will touch the southwestern coast of Java, near it's capital city, Batavia. The shadow path will then leave the East Indies, and crossing over the most un- inhabited portions of Australia, will ultimately disappear in the Pacific Ocean. English observers are making arrange ments to visit the most eligible spots for studying the eclipse, and the Astronomer Royal is experimenting the adaptation of instruments.
 The question of the suns corona, if 1t is not, as MT. Lockyer claims, the scientific question of the, day." is un- doubtedly the great problem of celestial physics. If astronomers can only once settle what is the real nature of the suns surroundings the path of research IS open for the more distant stars. At present, however, the corona is wrapped in cloud of hypothesis. Surrounding the sun somewhat as an intensely illu- mined atmospheric envelope, MT. Airy likened it to the ornament round the compass card, giving it Q height equal to about once and half the suns diam eter. In 1852 it was described as "a pleasant spectacle of rotatory motion. !" Don Antonio Unoa; 8 Spanish astron- omer, remarked of the corona observed in the eclipse of 1788, " It seemed to be endued with 8 rapid rotatory motion, which caused it to resemble a frework turning round its centre" The terms whirling and fickering were applied to it in the records of the eclipse of 186O- an extraordinary condition, which, how ever, was fully endorsed by the late eclipse observations. s
 It is highly probable that great and early discoveries are in store for the in dications strongly favor the view that this remarkable phenomenon, just alfud- ed to, is not mere accident, bat an essential part of the solar mechanism, which, like all other parts of creation, have bearing upon mans welfare. History records some instances in which, even during severe battles, the prodigy of an eclipse either stopped the combat, or silenced it's din and fury by striking the combatant's with the paralysis of terror. If the recurrence of the "awful obscuration" has lost its power to terrify it has not lost it's power to in struct the philosopher and to fill the be- holder with the mute and sublime admi- ration. Let our American astronomers be among the first to win the honor of these magnificent solar discoveries.