Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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I Could Not Begin A Regular Course Of Astronomical Observations
Before The 28th Of July, Though It Was Highly Important
For me to
know the longitude given by Berthoud's time-keeper; but it
happened, that in a country where the
Sky is constantly clear and
serene, no stars appeared for several nights. The whole series of
the observations I made in 1799 and 1800 give for their results,
that the latitude of the great square at Cumana is 10 degrees 27
minutes 52 seconds, and its longitude 66 degrees 30 minutes 2
seconds. This longitude is founded on the difference of time, on
lunar distances, on the eclipse of the sun (on the 28th of October,
1799), and on ten immersions of Jupiter's satellites, compared with
observations made in Europe. The oldest chart we have of the
continent, that of Don Diego Ribeiro, geographer to the emperor
Charles the Fifth, places Cumana in latitude 9 degrees 30 minutes;
which differs fifty-eight minutes from the real latitude, and half
a degree from that marked by Jefferies in his American Pilot,
published in 1794. During three centuries the whole of the coast
of Terra Firma has been laid down too far to the south: this has
been owing to the current near the island of Trinidad, which sets
toward the north, and mariners are led by their dead-reckoning to
think themselves farther south than they really are.
On the 17th of August a halo round the moon fixed the attention of
the inhabitants of Cumana, who considered it as the presage of some
violent earthquake; for, according to popular notions, all
extraordinary phenomena are immediately connected with each other.
Coloured circles around the moon are much more rare in northern
countries than in Provence, Italy, and Spain. They are seen
particularly (and this fact is singular enough) when the sky is
clear, and the weather seems to be most fair and settled. Under the
torrid zone beautiful prismatic colours appear almost every night,
and even at the time of the greatest droughts; often in the space
of a few minutes they disappear several times, because, doubtless,
the superior currents change the state of the floating vapours, by
which the light is refracted. I sometimes even observed, between
the fifteenth degree of latitude and the equator, small halos
around the planet Venus; the purple, orange, and violet, were
distinctly perceived: but I never saw any colours around Sirius,
Canopus, or Acherner.
While the halo was visible at Cumana, the hygrometer denoted great
humidity; nevertheless the vapours appeared so perfectly in
solution, or rather so elastic and uniformly disseminated, that
they did not alter the transparency of the atmosphere. The moon
arose after a storm of rain, behind the castle of San Antonio. As
soon as she appeared on the horizon, we distinguished two circles:
one large and whitish, forty-four degrees in diameter; the other a
small circle of 1 degree 43 minutes, displaying all the colours of
the rainbow. The space between the two circles was of the deepest
azure.
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