Three in Line

The Sun, the Moon, the Earth, traveling in their accustomed courses came, for a brief space of time, into a straight line. The Moon, being the middle member of the three, shielded parts of the Earth from the Sun's rays. Then the three moved out of line and the eclipse had passed.

Although the eclipse took the greater part of one day, the moving shadow of the moon tarried over no place on the earth's surface for longer than two minutes. In that brief time, scientists observed and recorded in mad haste.

The course of the eclipse was from northern Minnesota, across northern Michigan, Ontario, New York, southern New England and out over the Atlantic. In the west, conditions were not favorable for observations 1) because it took place very early in the morning, when the Sun could be seen but obliquely through a great quantity of the Earth's atmosphere and 2) because clouds blanketed the sky over the greater part of the country west of central New York. Eastern New York State and Connecticut had the best of the observing of the total eclipse, although a good portion of the Eastern part of the country had good atmospheric conditions for viewing the partial eclipse.

Unfortunately, it was an extremely cold morning, which meant that the Earth's atmosphere was dense and probably interfered with some of the finer scientific observations. It will be several weeks, if not months, before scientists have completely studied and correlated their photographs and observations and are ready to make public their conclusions. Only a few general facts could immediately be made known. These include:

P: That the period of totality arrived some five seconds later than predicted.

P: That, during the period of totality and immediately before and after, radio transmission was affected; short-length waves diminished in intensity and disappeared; long-length waves grew in intensity.

P: That shadow bands-moving shadows seen on snow and other light objects were very well observed; when a final analysis is made of all observations it seems probable that the theory will be confirmed that the shadow bands are caused by the Earth's atmosphere.

P: That--according to reports based on the first photographs developed--there was a considerable number of prominences, or projections of the Sun's corona. This was unexpected, since the prominences are believed to be connected with sunspot activity, which at present is small.