Abstract
THE TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE OF 1605, Oct. 12.- Clavius, observing the solar eclipse of April 9, 1567, at its maximum, remarked “a narrow ring of light round the moon which he supposed to be the margin of the solar disc.” Kepler, however, maintained that this could not be in reality a portion of the sun, because the moon's apparent diameter at the time must have been greater than that of the sun, and he concluded, as Prof. Grant relates in his “History of Physical Astronomy,” that the sun must have been totally covered by the moon while the narrow ring of light was visible, a phenomenon again exhibited in the total eclipse of Oct. 12, 1605, which was observed at Naples. Of this eclipse Kepler says (De Stella Nova in pede Serpentarii)—“Accuratè rectum fuisse totum Solem, quod quidem non diu duraverit; in medio, ubi Luna, fuisse speciem quasi nigræ nubis; cir-cumcirca rubentem et flammeum splendorem, æqualis undique latitudinis, qui bonam cœli partem occupaverit: E regioni Solis, versus Septentrionem, Œelum obscurum planè, et cum profunda nox est; Stellas tamen noa visas.”
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Our Astronomical Column . Nature 13, 108–109 (1875). https://doi.org/10.1038/013108b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/013108b0