Abstract
WE have received from Mr. Edward R. Hewitt, of 127 East 21st Street, New York, a correction of the statement, quoted in NATURE of March 13, that the National Geographic Magazine of February contained the first natural colour photograph of a total solar eclipse ever reproduced. Mr. Hewitt informs us that the Scientific American of April 1925 reproduced a colour photograph, made by him, of the total eclipse of January 24, 1925, and has sent us a copy of the reproduction. Mr. Hewitt, in 1925, used Autochrome plates specially sensitized by himself, and his camera had a focal length of 3 ft. Dr. Gardner, in 1936, used Dufay colour plates and a camera of 19-ft. focal length. Owing to the greatly differing circumstances, any detailed comparison of the two pictures would be invidious. The picture Mr. Hewitt has sent us is about a tenfold enlargement of the original, and shows a yellow coronal image extending to about a fifth of a solar radius from the limb, so that on the original plate the coronal image can only have been about 0-6 mm. across, whereas Dr. Gardner's picture was reproduced at about actual size and showed a corona extending to about a solar radius or about 20 mm. on the original plate. In view of the low resolving power of colour plates, it would be absurd to expect much recognizable detail on the 1925 plates, and indeed there is only a suggestion of coronal form, and the colour is presumably in error, but the photographs had the value of demonstrating that colour plates could be made sensitive enough to photograph a total eclipse.
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Natural Colour Eclipse Photography. Nature 140, 271–272 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/140271d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/140271d0