3-038-959 - 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...[The diagram] shows how the light shot out suddenly to the extent shown in the Engraving; this phenomenon lasted about thirty seconds... Some of our readers are aware that the most interesting subject of inquiry to be determined by these observations of the eclipse was the nature of the corona, or "glory," of white light encircling the globe of the sun, and visible only when that globe itself is hidden. This question is, whether this light comes from a luminous gas, an atmosphere of the sun, or from solid matter in a state of white heat. The bright red prominences, flame-like or cloud-like, seen around the disc of the sun during an eclipse are known to belong to an envelope of glowing gas which surrounds the solar globe'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.