Simon Newcomb Quotes

The Venus transit is not a spectacle the way a total solar eclipse is a spectacle.

The total eclipses of the sun are very special and have been associated with wars, famines, floods, unprecedented climate changes and the death or birth of dictators, rulers, presidents and kings, especially near the area where the total eclipse occurs.

Whenever a total eclipse of the sun was visible in an accessible region parties were sent out to observe it.

An eclipse is one phenomenon that is actually more impressive from the ground.

Back in the late 1970's, when I was fifteen years old, I spent every penny I then had in the bank to fly across the continent in a 747 jet to Brandon, Manitoba, deep in the Canadian prairies, to witness a total eclipse of the sun.

Astronomers sometimes observe that a star of medium magnitude increases suddenly in size; a star invisible to the naked eye may become very brilliant and visible without any telescope - the appearance of a Nova.

The reports of the eclipse parties not only described the scientific observations in great detail, but also the travels and experiences, and were sometimes marked by a piquancy not common in official documents.

Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest.

When, according to habit, I was contemplating the stars in a clear sky, I noticed a new and unusual star, surpassing the other stars in brilliancy. There had never before been any star in that place in the sky.

Astronomers are greatly disappointed when, having traveled halfway around the world to see an eclipse, clouds prevent a sight of it; and yet a sense of relief accompanies the disappointment.

Once every lunar eclipse, you should be able to see me smile!

To morrow, I believe, is to be an eclipse of the sun, and I think it perfectly meet and proper that the sun in the heavens, and the glory of the Republic should both go into obscurity and darkness together.

The sun will set without thy assistance.

In many cultures, a total eclipse of the Sun predicts cataclysms and bad events.

He sighed. "The clouds I can handle. But I can't fight with an eclipse.

What's the sense in having an eclipse if you can't look at it? Somebody in production sure slipped up this time!

I'd seen a great many partial eclipses, but a partial eclipse has the same relation to a total eclipse as flirting with a man does to marrying him. It's completely different.

I was born with Halley's Comet and I expect to die upon its return.

I haven't experienced anything paranormal yet, but I did see what I think was a meteor light up the sky in a flash of red for a few seconds. That was really cool.

'Easter' is a movable event, calculated by the relative positions of sun and moon, an impossible way of fixing year by year the anniversary of a historical event, but a very natural and indeed inevitable way of calculating a solar festival. These changing dates do not point to the history of a man, but to the hero of a solar myth.

That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise.

I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'

Our experiences of the Solstice depends entirely upon where we are when it occurs. Neither Solstice encompasses everyone. Neither can. The Solstices stand forever opposed, literally at the two poles of our Earth and experiences.

In October, 1865, occurred what was, in my eyes, the greatest event in the history of the observatory. The new transit circle arrived from Berlin in its boxes.