Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1896-08-10
THE SUMS ECLIPSE
it, Surface Was OhEared Yesterday BY the
Hoon'a Shadow,
Great Interest in nthe Event by As
suits Repopted So Far.

1t was doleful waste Of a good thing
Tor the sun to go and hide himself yes
terday In such position that 1t made
olHerence only to the fishes and the Ii
oerians. 1t was like carrying Goals to
Newcastle. There 1s a pleasant flavor to
the word eclipse" at such season, Just
as the very British word GOALS" has an
unpleasant smack. Ordinarily the people
OF this region would gladly welcome bit
OF modesty on his solar highness' face,
especially on such day as yesterday,
when the official thermometer ran up to
W degrees and the unofficial thermometers
played leap frog with the hundred mark.
But the inscrutable law of the universe
aeons ago decreed that this particular
shadow cast by the moon as she passes
oeI"een the earth and the sun should
IAN on strip OF the surface of this sphere
extending In parabolic line from point
JUST north of the British Isles across the
upper edge Of the Scandinavian peninsula,
skirting the isles north of the Russian
shore and swinging enthusiastically
through Siberia, leaving the Chinese coast
north of the Japanese Islands, then to turn
Sharply out into the Pacific, ending just
west OF the Hawaiian Islands, where the
curtain Tell on the show by reason of the
shadow lifting from the sun. And it was
also decreed that eclipses such as this
snculo occur once in every eighteen years
ana eleven days. The program has been
1olloWed with fidelity. 30 far as human
records have been kept and unless there
are different arrangements made in the
business department OF the solar system
mere will be another of these streaks nj
darkness trailed across the earth's surface
along about August q, 1914. and again
about August 81, 1882 1t may comfort
some folks in the United States to know
mat the first Of these forthcoming mid
ably be visible to them. No other total
echpse OF the sun can be expected to
arouse the same amount of enthusiasm in
local circles as one taking place in the
tODtanS
Interest of Astronomers.
There is something gratifying in the
knowledge that the sun was handicapped
by the moon on such a day as yesterday.
Perhaps 1t is the Joy that the small and
powerless always feel when the great and
tyrannical is bested for a time. But to
think Of such boon being wasted the
stberians is enough to drive the people to
drinking ginger ale.
Astronomers take great deal of interest
in all eclipses, just as the political candi-
dates take a deal of trouble with the chill
dren of their prospective constituents be-
fore election day. There are plenty of
both.
OF course, there are not so many eclipses
as children, nor will there ever be, but as
trcnomY is a never-beginning, never lending
science, and even an event that occurs only
once In eighteen years and eleven days can
become quite ordinary in the course of
few hundred billions of years. Yet men of
the sky-scraping genius are SO constituted
that they can see use for every phenome-
non that occurs in the unfathomable
heavens, and il there are no new data to be
secured from an eclipse, transit or an oc-
cultation, there are old data to be verified
ard representations to be anticipated.
The only trouble about the business is that
1t Is practically all cut and dried centuries
ahead of time, and the novelty of the de-
Velopments can hardly be called startling.
1t takes a truly scientific mind for q man
to appreciate the keen Zest that astrono-
mers take in their work, and hence the
is fact, for instance, that for the purpose
of observing this eclipse astronomers have
fer weeks been journeying from all the
centers OF science to the PARKWAY tract of
shadow and placing their instruments with
accuracy just to see II they couldn't catch
Ola Sol mapping, to try to find him a hun
dredth part of second slow or to prove
that the moon had started in the spring be-
fore the crack of the celestial pistol
For instance, Prof. Schaeberle of the
Lick observatory, in California. went over
to Ycsso, Japan. end Joined forces there
with an expedition sent by the British
Royal Astronomical Society. Prof. Payne
of Carleton College. Minnesota, and q
group of students went over to Bodoe
Norway. where he found party of Scan
dinavian sun-squinters scattered along the
north Finnish coast, and on the fjords of
the north cape country were other parties,
and over in Siberia the Russian sky-prob-
ers were stationed in numbers.