The patches did not last long, but were lost as the shadow swept off the moon. I saw nothing of the sort during the approach of or pending totality, nor until a small crescent of the moon began to appear behind the shadow.
I have looked for other accounts of these patches, but cannot find any. Most observers have described the deeper colour of the shadowed moon by the word “copper.” Some extend this colour to red; but there is probably much in the state of the atmosphere affecting this.
Dec. 3, 1703, moon’s colour described.
At Avignon, December 3, 1703, the moon appeared, pending eclipse, “extraordinarily illuminated and of a very bright red,” while other and different features were seen at Montpelier.
On March 19, 1848, observers in England, Ireland, and Belgium described the moon’s disk as “intensely bright coppery red.” On the occasion of August 23-24, 1877, before mentioned, an article in one of the public papers described the moon’s disk, during totality, as of a “dull copper colour.”
Mr. Keye’s observation.
Mr. Henry Keye, in the Engadine, at a height of 4500 feet above sea-level, and with the purest air, saw the partially covered moon (before totality) as a “dull copper colour.”
Prof. Pritchard’s. M. Faye’s. Dr. Allnatt’s at Frant.
Prof. Pritchard, writing from the Oxford University Observatory, says that at 12h 10m (about the time my sketches were taken) there was a good deal of light on the moon’s following limb, and the colour was “more red than copper,” and apparently redder than it had been at a similar distance of time before totality. Mons. Faye reported to the French Academy of Sciences that “a striking phenomenon not previously noticed was that the reddish tinge, resembling that of a fine sunset, was deepest at the margin of the disk, a circumstance which he could not explain.” Dr. Allnatt, writing from Frant, says:—“At totality the moon’s disk presented a most extraordinary appearance: the western limb was comparatively transparent, but the main body appeared as though enveloped in a semi-opaque clot of coagulated blood, through which the lunar features were dimly visible.”