The Central Nevadan. [volume] (Battle Mountain, Nev.) 1885-1907, 1889-10-03

soioa SShPoo III htrica nubt take their
departure. Congress appropriated the
small sum Of 5000 to dsfray the OK.
penses of an American expedition,
which will te led by Professor Todd.
England and France will send out
observing parties. But the eclipse is
OF such moment to science that all the
great powers ought to have literally
provided for participation in observing
and photographing the phenomenon.
The meteorology Of the sun is so
closely connected with terrestrial
phenomena that IL become, duty of
all nations to spare no pains or sx-
psnss In improving the grand oppor-
tunity for solar discoveries which as
tronomers will have in December.
Physicists have always had to contend
with such difficulties in the quest of
solar lore that as yet We know little of
the suns metsorology. Fifty years
ago Pouillet, the French savant, and
the younger Herschel attacked the
problem Of determining the amount Of
heat sent to the earth by the sun.
Valuable as were the experiments oi
these and numerous later observers,
the results have been modified by the
recent discoveries of Professor Lang
ley showing that the sun radiates
much more heat to the earth than was
previously supposed. Hsrschel con-
cluded that with the sun in the zenith
its heat on the earths surface would
melt ice of an inch thickness in about
two and quarter hours. Langley
finds that it would annually melt an
ice shell nearly one hundred and
seventy feet deep and covering
the whole surface Of our globe. The
question If how the solar fires are
maintained is still almost entirely un-
answered. Our cable dispatches re-
Gently quoted an English astronomer
as saying that the December eclipse
may enable astronomers to prove that
the solar atmosphere becomes lumin-
GUS from the glowing If meteoric
material. Such discovery would be
Of great value to solar physics. Sir
William Thomson has shown that If
the sun were composed OF solid coal
and produced its heat by combustion
it would in six thousand years have
been reduced to q cindsr. Ii, how
ever, Its temperature is maintained by
meteoric material failing into it, we
can comprehend how its fires can be
kept up. as long as the supply of this
cosmical fuel is abundant, though it is
hard to see how enough of this fuel
exists in the neighborhood of the sun
to replenish its voracious furnaces
these six thousand years Neverthe-
less, should the next eclipse observa-
tions show that the spectrum Of the
suns corona corresponds to that of
cool meteorities, and the so-called
solar "prominences turn out to be
falls Of meteoric matter, the mystery
will be in part unravsled. If this ani-
mating hope of discovery respecting
the prominencss is at all realized some
light may possibly be thrown upon the
var iations of solar heat as directly af-
fecting the earth's weather. In 1880
Professor Young observed one of these
mighty flames Of glowing gas on the
suns southeast limb, forty thousand
miles high, which ninety times
scared to the hei, ht of three hundred
thou sand miles. 1t is not improbable
that such frightful aud majestic solar
storms of solar energy produce dis.
turbanecs in the atmosphere of our
own planet. 1t is fortunate that the
next eclipse, which will be visible in
South Africa aud South America, will
occur between the equator and the
tenth southern parallel on December
22d, when the lesser of the two annual
rainy seasons will be past and fair
skies may be expected. The fine port
Of st. Paul de Loanda. where the
American expedition will land and
whence they will go inland to their
selected station, has rather an arid eli.
mate. with a rainfall of only eleven
inches in year. 1t is to be hoped
that astronomers of all nations will be
accorded all facilities by THAR govern
,nents for improving the opportunity.
New York Herald.
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