Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1924-12-28

of partial eclipse-the Woolworth
| Building, for instance:
! The city lies below you calm in the
| freshness of an early Winter morning
| At o'clock glance at the sun
| through smoked glasses-these are
absolutely necessary to prevent eye
strain and possible blindness mi
mute black tooth bites into the west
| ern rim Of the sun. This grows, anu
as it pushes its way across the sun
with the terrible inevitableness Of
| fate. the imagination is forced 10
reckon with this, as the moon, the
| gracious, lovely queen of night, now
gone mad by day, gone sterile and
| oluinous until IL is no longer the
| familiar thing of beauty, but dead.
inert mass that Is showing US its
dark side for the first time.
Daylight to Disappear.
The brightness Of day fades, giving
place to an unearthly twilight, an
ashen dusk that is like none other
we have ever seen. Across the city
below us play the shadow bands
weird strips of darkness moving
slowly across the earth and resem-
bling the reflections of sunlight on
water. They are probably metero-
| logical--that is, due to conditions OF
the earth's atmosphere as acted upon
by the peculiar light filtering down
| from the crescent of sunshine. They
may or may not appear. We don't
know what they are and all attempts
| to photograph them have SO far been
unsuccessful
Then, with more good luck. the
observer of the partial eclipse that is
| almost a complete one will see the
Bailey's beads. These will mark the
height Of the eclipse for those who
see them in the zone of partial OBJ
scuration. They are caused by the
| mountains OF the moon through
whose valleys at the moment of
almost complete observation blots of
sunlight sift through and fall to
earth as golden beads. After the ap
pearance of Bailey's beads the OBJ
server of a partial eclipse will see
the crescent Of sun Immediately
| begin to enlarge until the moon
slips completely from in front of it.
See Much More.
So much for the partial eclipse
Those who are in the black dot will
see all this and much more. Sup
pose we plant ourselves on hill up
Westchester way, well within the
zone Of totally and high enough IN
elevation to see for some miles over
the surrounding country. At the
beginning of the eclipse we shall see
the same phenomena as from the
Woolworth tower, the sinister globe
of the moon encrouching on the sun,
the gradual spread of darkness.
Then comes the greatest thrill. Look
ing westward there appears the wall
of the black spot itself, the cone OF
the moons shadow, rushing at the
observer at the rate of 1900 miles
an hour, looking like a great upper
jaw that Is swapping down unto the
helpless earth.
When the black spot has engulfed
the observer it remains over him for
a minute or so--it will last for two
minutes at New Haven where it's CEN
ter falls-and during that brief time
occurs the phenomenon which every
good astronomer hopes to see before
he dies: This is the solar corona.
No sooner has the last thin rim
of sunshine disappeared simultane-
ously with the rush overhead of the
shadow wall than the corona bursts
on the vision, an aShen halo encir-
cling the black head of the moon. For
a distance of about the diameter Of
the moon it will extend on all sides,
a different thing than moonlight, a
different light from any that you have
ever seen, with its glowing coral in
ner ring next the sun and its ghostly
diffusion of eerie radiance out to its
brush-like tips. 1t will have some
thing near the strength Of the light of
a. full moon.
Corona Still Mystery.
What Is the corona? There you
have the astronomers. They know It
extends sometimes as far as 10000
600 miles from the sun; they know it
acts directly over the areas where
sunspots appear and where the leap
ing flames of ignited hydrogen, he'll
ium and calcium of the solar prom
inences appear; they think it is the
stream of electrons. luminous solar
particles, light pressure-what you
will-but they know definitely they
have had less than an hour to study
1t during the times when modern in
struments have been applied to it,
and that they wish most awfully that
clear weather will occur January "a,
1925, and so give them another brief
two minutes to make corona photo
graphs.