The Total Solar Eclipse of October 1, 1940

Abstract

NOT for the first time a European War has sadly interfered with plans for the observation of a total eclipse of the sun. European expeditions to South Africa and South America have all been necessarily abandoned. Four expeditions from Great Britain (from Aberdeen, Cambridge, Greenwich and London) have had to be given up, though some of the apparatus which was to have been used by the British parties have been sent out to South Africa for the use of parties from the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope, and from the Radcliffe Observatory, Pretoria, the great mirror of which suffers one more long delay in completion and arrival. The only other expeditions likely to observe the eclipse—save local parties of university students and keen amateur astronomers—come from the Commonwealth Solar Observatory at Mount Stromlo, Canberra, Australia, and from the National Geographic Society and the National Bureau of Standards of the United States.