[Solar Eclipse from Caroline Island]

H. A. Lawrence British
 C. Ray Woods British

Not on view

On May 6, 1883, a dramatic total eclipse plunged the Sun into darkness for nearly six minutes. Several expeditions of prominent astronomers from the United States, Great Britain, France, and Italy convened on Caroline Island, a remote coral atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, to observe and document the event. During the two weeks before the eclipse, the teams set up several makeshift observatories in canvas tents, as well as numerous free-standing telescopes, spectroscopes, and other astronomical instruments. Lawrence and Woods, British astronomers who sailed with the American mission on the U.S.S. Hartford, collected spectrographic data and recorded the eclipse with eleven cameras simultaneously. Among the images they captured was this striking view of the totality.

[Solar Eclipse from Caroline Island], H. A. Lawrence (British, active 1880s), Gelatin silver print

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