The Optical Magic Lantern Journal (October 1900)

119 Kodak Dividend.—For the quarter ending September 30th, Kodak, Limited, have declared interim dividends of 6 per cent. on the preference shares and 2% per cent. on the ordinary shares, and a further dividend of 24 per cent. on account of bonus for the year. Se a ee, A a EET ET The Late Mr. A. A. Wood.—It is with great regret that we have to announce the death of Mr. A. A. Wood, the head of the well-known optical and lantern business of E. G. Wood, which took place on the 10th ult. from heart disease. Mr. Wood had been ailing for some months, but was able to be at business until within a few days of his decease. Mr. Wood was a man of high qualities, and to know him was to admire his sterling abilities. By his death the City Corporation have lost a respected and prominent member. Oat The Total Eclipse of the Sun (28th May, 1900), and its Photographic Results—No. I. By W. H. GOLDING. Continued from page 112. y LI, or nearly all, the stations occupied appear to have been amply provided (@ with the means of securing these RNG photographic records, from the ordinary camera with lenses of long VQBS OZ focus, giving an image of the moon’s es, disc from an eighth to a quarter &= of an inchin diameter, surrounded by the glowing solar appendages, to the magnificent telescopes employed by the Astronomer-Royal and other representatives of official observatories, in some of which the image of the eclipsed sun was enlarged, by means of secondary magnification on the principle of the telephotographic lens, to cover a disc 4 inches in diameter ; and as clear and almost unclouded skies proved to be the order of the day at nearly every station, a large number of excellent photographs have been secured, showing very clearly the form and arrangement of the coronal streamers and of the prominences of the chromosphere. The eclipse was by universal consent pronounced to have been a very light one; the darkness and gloom which overspreads the landscape during the total phase, and which has frequently rendered the use of lamps necessary to enable the figures on the clocks and watches and on the scales of the instruments to be read by those using them, having proved far less intense than during some other eclipses of recent years, rendering a shorter exposure of the photographic plates sufficient to produce a satisfactory image, than that found to give the best results in former instances. Thus the Thompson photo-heliograph of the Greenwich Observatory, with its telephotographic lens giving the 4 inch disc, required an exposure not exceeding 12 seconds, against 20 seconds found needful during the Indian eclipse of 1898, while with the smaller instruments, having lenses of 8 or 4 feet focal length, the greater concentration of the light on the small image rendered an exposure of one second sufficient to secure a well defined image. The corona appeared much whiter than on many previous occasions, when it has been distinctly violet in hue. The activity of the sun’s atmosphere, or of the outer layers of his globe, which shows itself in the occurrence of sunspots, has long been found to pass through a regular period of increase and decline, attaining a maximum every 11 years, and afterwards subsiding until a minimum has been reached, when few spots, if any, are visible, after which the activity is again gradually renewed. During periods of maximum disturbance, such as occurred in 1893, the coronium and other substances forming the corona have usually been found nearly evenly distributed around the sun’s disc, though taking the form of luminous rays or filaments alternating with darker lines or rifts radiating from his surface in all directions. This was very apparent in the photographs and drawings made in Brazil and Western Africa during the eclipse seen there in 1893. On the other hand, eclipses occurring when the sunspot activity was at its lowest point, as was the case in 1878 and 1889, have shown the corona extended greatly in the direction of the sun’s equator and but very slightly in that of his poles, forming long equatorial appendages which have been compared to wings or fish-tails. The present year being again one of minimum sunspot disturbance, the question whether the conditions of 1878 and 1889 would repeat themselves, and the great equatorial extensions of the corona would reappear, became one of considerable interest. The expectation that such would be the case has been fully realised. The photographs secured, as well as the drawings made by those who watched the eclipse for the purpose of thus recording their impressions of the corona as seen by them,