Eclipse Observations

Abstract

THE idea of collecting different accounts of the same eclipse, and breaking them up, so that all descriptions of one and the same phenomenon should be found side by side, first originated with the Astronomer-Royal, who began to collect all accounts he could procure of the eclipse of 1860. As pressure of work prevented him from carrying out his idea, Mr. Cowper Ranyard took it up at his suggestion and gradually extended the plan, so as to include all the more important physical observations which have ever been recorded during total solar eclipses. This enormous work has now been published in a volume of nearly 800 pages, and there cannot be two opinions as to its usefulness and value. It must, however, be borne in mind that this is a mere work of compilation, and the reader who expects to find a general and correct account of the conclusions to be drawn from the observed phenomena and the results which have actually been arrived at, will be bewildered rather than instructed by the perusal of the book. The volume is simply intended to classify the observations which have been made, and not to discuss them. A good discussion is very much wanted, but it could hardly have been made by a single man, and certainly not without consulting the chief authorities on the subject. It is of course impossible to avoid altogether reference to theories which have been proposed, and their comparison with observations for which they are supposed to account, but Mr. Ranyard has acted in this respect with commendable self-restraint, and whenever he departs from his general rule, he only makes us feel how grateful we ought to be to him, that he has not more often indulged in such vague, confused, and unsatisfactory discussions as here and there disfigure the book. As it is, it will not be difficult to draw a pen through all state ments involving debateable matters, and we shall then have a volume which will do credit to its author and to the Society which has published it.

Observations made during Total Solar Eclipses.

Collated by A. C. Ranyard. Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. xli., 1879.