held in front of the object-glass to avoid shaking the telescope in any way.
For in and out, above, about, below
'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show
Played in a Box whose candle is the Sun
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.
Our shadow-box takes up all our attention. There is a marvellous spectacle above, and, as the photographs afterwards revealed, a wonderful prominence-flame is poised a hundred thousand miles above the surface of the sun. We have no time to snatch a glance at it. We are conscious only of the weird half-light of the landscape and the hush of nature, broken by the calls of the observers, and beat of the metronome ticking out the 302 seconds of totality.
Sixteen photographs were obtained, with exposures ranging from 2 to 20 seconds. The earlier photographs showed no stars, though they portrayed the remarkable prominence; but apparently the cloud lightened somewhat towards the end of totality, and a few images appeared on the later plates. In many cases one or other of the most essential stars was missing through cloud, and no use could be made of them; but one plate was found showing fairly good images of five stars, which were suitable for a determination. This was measured on the spot a few days after the eclipse in a micrometric measuring-machine. The problem was to determine how the apparent positions of the stars, affected by the sun's gravitational field, compared with the normal positions on a photograph taken when the sun was out of the way. Normal photographs for comparison had been taken with the same telescope in England in January. The eclipse photograph and a comparison photograph were placed film to film in the measuring-machine so that corresponding images fell close together[1], and the small distances were measured in two rectangular directions. From these the relative displacements of the stars could be ascertained. In comparing two plates, various allowances have to be made for refraction, aberration, plate-orientation, etc.; but since these occur equally in determinations of stellar parallax, for which
- ↑ This was possible because at Principe the field of stars was reflected in the coelostat mirror, whereas in England it was photographed direct.
