New Britain herald., 1925-01-27
EASY ID FIGURE
 TIME OF ECLIPSE
Scientist Tells Lions How They Can Compute Next One

Nc" Britain has a chance to sec another eclipse this year, this time .of the moon according to Professor Rogers of Trinity college, who spoke on Astronomical Phenome- na' at the uoeting of the Lions club at the Burritt hotel this afternoon. 1 The speaker stated tltat there will i be four ecIipses this year, two of the sun, including the one of last Saturday, the other partial eclipse and two of the moon. one of which should be seen in New Britain. He called attention to the fact that the sun being "only 9S million miles away" is q comparatively next door ncighbor as compared to other planets. At the rate of 1S6, GOO miles q second, which is the speed , of light. he said it takes the sun rays lHight minutes after the sun stopped. l this basis. while human life cannot cXist without the sun, it would be eight minutcsafter the sun stopped, if it ever did. before all would be , over here. The distance from the earth 10 the sun, figuring eight min Iutes at 1S6.000 miles a second is 'considcred one astronomical unit, he said, by scientists who measure dis tanCes. He said one twenty five thousandth of an inch is an easy thing to measure and with modern astronomical apparatus scientists can measure 100 million light years.
 Speaking of the relative size of the earth. sun and moon to each other and their r'latlons as Co distance from each other, he said if the sun were nine feet in diameter the earth would he one inch and the moon q half inch. If the sun were located at the Grand Central station the earth would be in New Britain and the moon would be 1000 feet away.
 He said the sun is very much alive, the earth is partially alive and the moon is absolutely dead. The shadow cast in space by the earth, i he said. is Sj0,0O miles long. He explained the various types of eclipse Of moon and sun. He said there are from two 70 seven eClipSes each year somewhere in the world, but that the path of tOtality In an eclipse of the sun is never more than 160 miles wide. A total eclipse Of the sun oc- CUTS about once in 800 years in any enc part Of the earth. The last onc visible in New England was in 1906 the next will be in 2024, but the does not mean that it will be seen from New Britian. The next total ! eclipse of the sun will be visible in England and will be at 5:30 o'clock | iii the morning on June @7, 1927.
 sounds Easy.
 He explained to the Lions how easy it is 10 figure cclipses. He Gaid the sun is moving in a certain direc- ton from l. 10 IA miles per second. The earth is moving around the sun at the rate of l9 miles per second. The moon is moving around the earth at th" rate of six-'enths of a mile per second. The earth is revoly- ing on is axis at the rate of two tcnths Of mile per second. From these figures, he said. t ought 10 be easy to get the location and speed of the planets and figure out an eclipse.
 He said it takes experts about fl hours steady figuring 10 compute the time of an eclipse, yet the one last Saturday was figured to within five seconds.
 He explained many remarkable things about the eclipse last Satur- day and pointed out plany phases which differed from others. He said there was Q ring of incandes- cent gas flames inside the corona, which was not visible because the flames "only travelled 5O0,000 miles" "Radiations from the Corona travelled for nine million miles," he said.
 Piano selections were rendered by