Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 March 1885 — The Eclipse. [ARTICLE]

The Eclipse.

The sun will be partially eclipsed on Monday next. J. G. Pori er, the astronomer at the Cincinnati Observatory, gives some inteiesting data in the Commercial Gazette of a 1 ecent date, which will be in structi ve to our readers. At the greatest obscuration about three-fifths of the sun’s diameter wil Ibe eclipsed. The duration of the phenomenon will be about three hours, beginning at 11 o’clock a. m. and ending at 2 p m. This eclipse is what is called by astronomers an annular one. Any one watching the sun and the moon rise near the full will see at a glance that their apparent diameters are nearly tie same. Were they exactly equal at the time of an eclipse, the sun would be completely covered when the discs coincide We sho’d thus have a total eclipse, but only of momentary duration, i The apparent diameters of the sun and moon are, however, not constant, varying according to the distance of the bod-

ies from us; and sometimes the moon’s disc is larger than the sun’s and sometimes smaller. In the former case th< ?re wo’d be a total eclipse of the sunin the latter case the moon’s disc would not quite co veHhat of the sun, and we should see the dark body of the moon surrounded by a thin jriuff of light. This will be the case during the eclipse of this month. The eclipse will be annular, only along that path which a line joining the centers o; the sun and moon will trace on the earth’s surface This path begins in the Pacific Ocean, enters the United States about 300 miles north of San Francisco, crosses Idaho and Montana, runs through the center of Hodson’s Bay and of Greenland, and terminates in the Arctic Ocean north of Iceland. in other portions of this country it appears as a partial eclipse.