3-034-833 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Total Solar Eclipse of Dec. 12: I. - central eclipse just beginning, 1871. 'Let the reader conceive that he is placed at the sun at the moment when central eclipse is about to begin upon the earth he would then see the earth as it is shown in fig. I. The arrow indicates the path on which the earth is travelling; and the imaginary polar axis is shown as a real line (-) slightly inclined, and the southern end tilted towards our observer in the sun. The moon is seen on the left, half her disc already overlapping the earth's face. The Indian peninsula, Ceylon, and Java are concealed from the observer on the sun, whose place is supposed to be at the middle of that half of the sun turned at the moment towards the earth. So that already Colonel Tennant and Mr. Pogson, in India, have the eclipse so far in progress that they cannot see the middle point of the sun's face'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.