Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1880 — A Large Sun Spot. [ARTICLE]

A Large Sun Spot.

A large spot, which a very keen eye might be able to distinguish without other assistance than a screen of smoked glass, is now visible near the eastern edge of the sun’s disk. Any good spy-glass will show it well, but care should be taken to protect the eye with a deeply-colored glass held firmly against the eye-piece. A smoked-glass screen gives a pleasant view, but is dangerous because the sooty deposit is apt to get rubbed off. The combination of a green glass with a red one is best, as it allows little heat to reach the eye, and shows the sun’s disk free from annoying discoloration. An astronomical telescope shows, in addition to the great spot, a scattered, double cluster of small spots between it and the edge. The disk is marked, in the neighborhood of the spots, with the bright ridges called faculn, which look See crinkled veins of light on the surface of the sun. The great spot is a very perfect specimen of its class, the vast, cavernous hole in the center, large enough probably for the earth to drop through, and with broken and jagged edges, looking almost black, with a slight tinge of purple. Near one end a vein of light projects partly across th* gulf, and beyond that the black center breaks through the whitish border. The penumbra surrounding the black portion is broad and well marked, of a grayish oolor, and bordered with lighter streaks.— H. Y. Sun. “Since the publication of a letter from W. H. H. Murray, written last summer soon after the attachment of his Guilford property and the fact of his insolvency was made public,” says the New Haven (Cohn.) Palladium, “ nothing has been heard of him by either his wife or the persons who are settling his estate. Mrs. Murray, who has the title of M. D., is employed as a physician in a New York hospital, and Mr. Murray is thought, to be in California, where he was when the letter spoken of was written. The mortgage of $lO,000 on the Guilford farm issaTd to cover the entire value of the place. 1 *