The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1927-06-06
THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES
Ball of Fire to Menace Earth, Sun
VIII Be Darkened, Moon VIII Fade Ont
June to Be Busy Month in
Science Circles; EcIipses
and Comet Will Be Stud
led by Savants.
BY Israel Klein
Science Editor, NEA Service


June will be an suspicious month
for science and superstition.
The sun will be darkened, the
moon will be obliterated and a great
ball of fire, with an enormous tall
will appear to threaten us IN the
sky.
The darkening of the sun and
obliteratio of the moon are eclipses
of these great bodies in space, and
the great ball of fire we know now
as a comet.
The first event this month is the
eclipse of the moon. The earth will
come between the sun and the
moon, completely shutting of direct
sunlight from our satellite. This
will occur in the night of June IA
IS, and will be seen all over the
western hemisphere.
Moon in Eclipse
First the moon will cut through
the outer shadow, or penumbra OF
the earth and will slowly cross into
the umbra, or dark shadow, which
it will reach at 1:43 a. m. eastern
time, June IS. For the next hour
and a half the moons eclipse Will
icrease until it will be eclipsed TO-
tally at 3:13.
This totality will last twenty-one
minutes. after which the moon Will
move slowly out of the earth's
shadow.
A week later the day becomes the
longest of the year, with the begin
ming of summer, at 5:22 on tne
morning of June %.
Almost at the same time we may
be able to detect a stranger in the
sky. 1t is the Pons- Winnecke
comet. discovered in 1919 by door
keeper at the observatory at Mar
settles and since then noticed every
six years.
Comets Strange Folk
Comets are a strange lot Of heav-
enlv bodies, each a collection OF
fierv meteors and dust particles
grouped together by some sort OF
electric attraction and whirling
around the sun at an enormous
speed and over a huge ellipse, or
fiat circle.
The Pons-W innecke comet is ap-
nroaching us at the rate Of twenty
four miles a second, faster than the
earth is travelling. and June 26 II
will come nearest to us-a distance
of 100000 miles.
If we stay up until in the
morning of June 26, Eastern time
we may see the comet perhaps
without aid of a telescope, but bare
ly visible in the sky almost directly
above us. The presence Of a wan
ing moon at the same time may
drown out the view of the comet.
Suns Eclipse June 20
OF far more importance to SCI
ence. although invisible in the
United States, will be the suns
eclipse on the morning of June %
AS the sun rises that morning,
the moon will get between it and
the earth to cast circular shadow
thirty miles in diameter.
This shadow will start a little
west of the Bay Of BiScay, cross the
Atlantic and pass over the populous
section of Lancashire in England
1t will proceed along the length
of Norway, the north of Sweden and
Lapland and over the desolate re-
gion of the Arctic ocean north OF
the Siberian coast, leaving the earth
at sunset at the tip of Alaska.
Scientists have been preparing
for this event for a whole year,
Some American scientists are going
to Norway to set up instruments
by which they may study the suns
corona, the great prominences of
fire that can be seen favorably only
when the moon covers the disk of
the sun. They want to know what
materials form 1t and exactly how,