British Envoy, wrote that very day: "The sun was totally darkened for 412 minutes of time; a fixed star and a planet appeared very bright; and his getting out of the eclipse was preceded by a blood-red streak of light, from its left limb; which continued not longer than 6 or 7 seconds of time;[1] then part of the sun's disk appeared, all of a sudden, bright as Venus was ever seen in the night; nay, brighter, and in that very instant gave a light and shadow to things, as strong as moonlight uses to do." Flamsteed adds his own comment on this strange story: "The Captain is set down as the first man ever heard of that took notice of a red streak of light preceding the emersion of the sun's body from a total eclipse. And I take notice of it to you, because it infers that the moon has an atmosphere; and its short continuance of only 6 or 7 seconds of time, tells us that its height is not more than the 5 or 6 hundredth part of her diameter," that is, about four miles.
At Geneva the same eclipse was viewed by a friend of Sir Isaac Newton, Facio Duillier, who, apparently, did not see the "blood-red streak," but gives a good description of the Crown, or as it is now called, the Corona. "The clouds," he says, "did change of a sudden their colour, and became red, and then of a pale violet. There was seen, during the whole time of the total immersion, a whiteness, which did seem to break out from behind the moon, and to encompass it on all sides equally. The same whiteness was but little determined, in its outward side, and was
- ↑ In the total eclipse of the present year there was seen "a brilliant display of carmine-coloured prominences extending over an arc of at least 60 deg." (Times, June 1, 1900, p. 10).
