Evening star., 1932-09-01
THOUSANDS HERE
OBSERVE ECLIPSE
Washington Has Ideal Skies
for Watching Moon
Pass Sun.
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.

In weird midafternoon twilight yes
terday Washington witnessed a blazing
sun transformed, as by incantations of
celestial magician, into the slender,
golden crescent Of three-day moon.
Thousands. their eyes protected by
pieces OF smoked glass or blurred cam
era plates, watched the strange phe-
nomenon taking place high in the
southwestern heavens as nearly nine
tenths of the suns face was blotted out
by the intervening shadow of the moon
The partial eclipse was almost a per-
feet spectacle here Only at the very
beginning was 1t hidden from view for
a moment by tumbling mass of gray
ish-white cumulus cloud which rolled
inopportunely over the red disk When
1t cleared away the moons shadow
there was q tiny. creseent-shaPed black
notch bitten into the upperright edge
of the sun.
Clouds Added Majesty. ~
During the hour which elapsed while
the eclipse was reaching its maximum
there were intervals of clearness
and obscurity. But the occasional
drifting clouds, like billows of smoke,
only added to the majesty and weird
ness of the scene. At the beginning
the white cloud masses were piled up
around the zenith. But long before
the maximum point of the eclipse they
had all drifted over and were congre-
gated over the Eastern horizon, far
away from the celestial drama which
was being enacted The southwestern
sky was fleckless dome of blue.
Thousands watched from rooftops
and street corners. Many Government
employees were released for a few min
utes to take advantage of the oppor-
tunity OF lifetime. President Hoo
yer watched through smoked glasses
from the White House lawn.
At the Naval Observatory, where a
triple set OF observations was made to
check actual time elements of the phe-
nomena with those predicted for wash
ington by the Naval Almanac Office. the
results were described as about as sat-
isfactory as could have been expected"
The naval astronomers lost the first
contact entirely. as did everybody else
in washington because of the mass of
cloud which drifted over the face of the
sun at that time. The time of last
contact, when the moons shadow
passed entirely from the face of the
sun, was obtained very accurately.
Moon a Trifie Late.
Preliminary computations indicate
the moon was a trifie late for the celes-
tial rendezvous. The orbit of the moon
Is the most uncertain element in COM
putting an eclipse because of the nu-
merous factors entering into the CAL
! culation, but Prof. James Robertson,
| head of the Naval Almanac Office. had
taken extraordinary precautions in de-
termining the time Of this event. The
moons orbit up to date was determined
from observations of the position of the
earth's satellite during more than q
hundred recent occultations of stars.
| some OF them as late as last April An
occultation Is an eclipse of a star by the
moon. Such phenomena occur fire.
, quently but are of interest only to
| astronomers.
The amount of the error cannot bs
stated until there has been an exhaus-
| tive analysis of the observational re-
suits and it may disappear altogether.
The naval astronomers used three in
| strumentS in observing the eclipse here
! Through 5-inch equatorial telescope
| visual observations were made of the
| instants of first and last contact.
Through a l2-inch equatorial telescope
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