In Sydney a few birds, mainly starlings, were misled by the premature dullness and returned from their feeding-grounds to their nests in Hyde Park and the Botanic Gardens before 6 o’clock.
Poultry farmers, however, said that the eclipse had not deceived their fowls, who went to their roosts at the normal time.
Eclipse of the Sun, looking through film and looking through cardboard, City, 1 November 1948Credit:Norman Brown
QUICK GLANCES
Most people who watched the eclipse heeded the warnings of eye specialists on the danger of looking at it directly.
A few people said they had risked taking a quick glance at the sun.
No cases of eyes being damaged by the eclipse were reported by ambulance officers or hospitals last night.
A leading Macquarie Street eye specialist said that persons who had damaged their eyes by looking at the eclipse would be aware of the damage immediately.
They would have a blank space in the centre of their vision, corresponding to where the rays of the sun had burnt and permanently destroyed part of the sensitive retina at the back of the eyes.
Hundreds of such cases were reported after the last eclipse visible in Sydney in 1943.
EXPERIMENTS
A view of the partial eclipse.Credit:Staff
All radio experiments associated with the eclipse were successful, Dr.J. H. Piddington, of the Radio physics Division of the C.S.I.R., said in Sydney last night.
One of the objects of the experiments, he said, was to find out whether there was a magnetic field around the sun as there was around the earth.
It would be several weeks before the results of the experiments would be known.
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The N.S.W. Government Astronomer, Mr. Harley Wood, took a photographic record of the eclipse from the Observatory.
Mr. Wood said that the photographs were mainly for purposes of record as a partial eclipse was not of much interest to astronomers.
It was only during a total eclipse that they could observe the sun’s corona, which is of most interest to astronomers.
The last total eclipse visible from Sydney was in 1857.
From the Archives, 1948: City workers view eclipse
Source: Philippines Alive
