SOLAR ECLIPSE.
GREAT SCIENTIFIC INTEREST. SUCCESSFUL OBSERVATIONS. (Rec. 8.5 a.in.) ‘CAPETOWN, Oct. 2. Thousands of people, including many scientists stationed at various points of a barren plateau, gathered in the totality belt in the Calvinia district for an eclipse of the sun. Conditions were perfect for the observation of totality, in which the light of the sun was equivalent to that of a full moon. The eclipse will probably prove one of the most successful known. Lo cloud marred the view of the great phenomenon. Scientists stated that they hoped great discoveries would result from the observation, but it would be many months before the calculations were worked out. . The corona shone out in vivid relict for nearly four minutes. Although they had been warned, the natives were most perturbed. As the eclipse blacked out the daylight, sudden darkness descended, the stars appeared, and an unearthly silence enshrouded the eclipse belt, which is one of the loneliest of South Africa’s semidesert areas. The work was carried out without a hitch at the astronomers’ camp. One spectograph used to record the spectrum at the moment of total eclipse was placed in a 10ft pit to protect the apparatus from the varying temperatures.
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Bibliographic details
Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 262, 3 October 1940, Page 7
Word Count
201SOLAR ECLIPSE. Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 262, 3 October 1940, Page 7
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