Eclipses, Past & Future; With General Hints for Observing the Heavens

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1889 Excerpt: ... at the time the Cimbri crossed over into Spain, and laid. it waste. About the time of the death of Julius Csesar, there is recorded to have been an extraordinary dimness of the sun. M. Arago has gone so far as to explain it by an annular eclipse in the year 44 B.c. But calculation shews there was no such phsenomenon. Arago must have confused it with the annular eclipse that happened seven years earlier, when Caesar crossed the Rubicon. Pliny makes use of the word defeclus, but he cannot be understood to mean an eclipse, as he speaks of its lasting a whole year. Tibullus also says, the misty year saw the darkened sun drive pale horses. Plutarch mentions the paleness of the sun for a year after Csesar's death, but adds that for want of the sun's heat the fruits did not come to maturity. The whole phsenomenon was.doubtless owing to some peculiar meteorological condition of the atmosphere. CHAPTER IV. ECLIPSES IN EACH CENTURY OP THE CHRISTIAN ERA, TO THE PRESENT DATE. The eclipses will now be arranged according to centuries. My chief authority, in the following catalogue, has been the Historia Celestis of Tycho Brahe. In every instance, I have ascertained by calculation that an eclipse took place at the date mentioned. Fibst Centxtry. A.d. 5. Small eclipse of the sun, on March 28, at Rome, alluded to by Dion Cassius, lib. 55. A.d. 14. Total eclipse of the moou on the morning of Sept. 27. About the time that Drusus settled the mutiny of the Pannonian legions. A.d. 17. Totus sol, Rorase, et compluribus Italise locis visas fuit obscurari.--Ty. Br., Hisloria Ce/estis. Misled by his imperfect tables, Tycho has considerably exaggerated the size of this eclipse. The obscuration at Home seems to have been about two-thirds of the southern part of the sun's disc. Lit...