These creatures behaved as though the night had come, but there were also signs of fear, surprise, even of terror, differing only "in degree" from those manifested during the grandiose phenomenon of a total eclipse by human beings unenlightened by a scientific education.
At Madrid the eclipse was only partial. The young King of Spain, Alfonso XIII, took care to photograph it, and I offer the photograph to my readers (Fig. 79), as this amiable sovereign did me the honor to give it me a few days after the eclipse.
Fig. 79.—The Eclipse of May 28, 1900, as photographed by King Alfonso XIII, at Madrid.
The technical results of these observations of solar eclipses relate more especially to the elucidation of the grand problem of the physical constitution of the Sun. We alluded to them in the chapter devoted to this orb. The last great total eclipses have been of immense value to science.
The eclipses of the Moon are less important, less interesting, than the eclipses of the Sun. Yet their aspect must not be neglected on this account, and it may be said to vary for each eclipse.
Generally speaking, our satellite does not disappear entirely in the Earth's cone of shadow; the solar rays are refracted round our globe by our atmosphere, and curving inward, illumine the lunar globe with a rosy tint that reminds one of the sunset. Sometimes, indeed, this refraction does not occur, owing doubtless to lack of transparency in the atmosphere, and the Moon becomes invisible. This happened recently, on April 11, 1903.
For any spot, eclipses of the Moon are incomparably more frequent than eclipses of the Sun, because the cone of lunar shadow that produces the solar eclipses is not very broad at its contact with the surface of the globe (10, 20, 30, 50, 100 kilometers, according to the distance of the Moon), whereas all the countries of the Earth for which the Moon is above the horizon at the hour of the lunar eclipse are able to see it. It is at all times a remarkable spectacle that uplifts our thoughts to the Heavens, and I strongly advise my readers on no account to forego it.