2-995-831 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Diagram of the position of the luminous prominences, 1860. 'It is very generally known that a short time since H.M.S. Himalaya returned to England with a party of about fifty English and foreign astronomers who had gone to Spain for the purpose of observing the solar eclipse. For the most part the expedition had been favoured with good weather on the day of the eclipse, and results were obtained which tend to throw considerable light upon, and possibly to set at once at rest, the question whether the luminous prominences and corona visible on the occasion of a total eclipse belong to the sun, or whether they are occasioned by the deflection and diffraction of the light of the sun's photosphere...The two photographs [taken by British astronomer Warren de la Rue]...prove incontestably that the luminous prominences belong to the sun and not to the moon, for the reason that they retained a fixed position in regard to our luminary as the moon glided before it, and because they did not change either their form or appearance, except in so far that the moon by passing over them shut them off on the eastern side, while fresh ones became visible on the western side, and were depicted in the second plate'. From "Illustrated London News", 1860.