3-038-957 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Eclipse of the Sun, 1871. 'We are indebted to Captain T. R. Lethbridge, commanding II.M.S. Trafalgar, and to Mr. Eaton Wallace Petley, navigating midshipman, for the communication of several diagrams, which we have engraved, and of a few notes, to record what they witnessed from the stern of that ship, moored alongside the New Mole at Gibraltar. Their notes are as follows: "At the commencement of the first contact we did not get the exact time, on account of a cloud passing over; but the time of contact of the first spot on the sun with the moon was 23h. 9m. 56s., Greenwich mean time. The second spot was obscured by cloud. Just before the totality (we may say 3 min.) we observed three bright rays of light shoot out from the S.W. quarter of the sun (as shown in fig. A), which lasted almost 30 sec., and did not appear again until after the totality...The rays of light darted out suddenly, one after the other, for a certain distance; and, after two seconds interval, as suddenly prolonged themselves, until they had the appearance of those shown in the diagram fig. A, but after an interval of thirty seconds they disappeared. Their colour was bright red'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.