Item 45 - Letter from George Airy

3 pp.

Hotel Feder, Turin - GA gives an outline of his movements around Europe followed by a description of an eclipse: 'Well - the sun arose badly and the sky was very cloudy, but we saw the beginning and progress of the eclipse clearly, and saw the totality well. But it is difficult to give an idea of it. The gloominess increased, the country seemed annihilated... The moon was seen like a black patch in the sky surrounded by a ring of light (very slightly red I think) whose breadth was about 1/8 of her own diameter... As touching the ring of light, about which so much has been said, I have no hesitation in believing it to depend neither on the sun's atmosphere nor on the moon', but simply to arise from our own atmosphere'.