The genuineness of the association was ratified by the duplicate spectacle of the next-ensuing minimum year. Two total eclipses of the sun distinguished 1889. The first took place on New Year's Day, when a narrow shadow-path crossed California, allowing less than two minutes for the numerous experiments prompted by the varied nature of modern methods of research. American astronomers availed themselves of the occasion to the full. The heavens were propitious. Photographic records were obtained in unprecedented abundance, and of unusual excellence. Their comparison and study placed it beyond reasonable doubt that the radiated corona belonging to periods of maximum sun-spots gives place, at periods of minimum, to the "winged" type of 1878. Professor Holden perceived further that the equatorial extensions characterising the latter tend to assume a "trumpet-shape."[563] Their extremities diverge, as if mutually repellent, instead of flowing together along a medial plane. The maximum actinic brilliancy of the corona of January 1, 1889, was determined at Lick to be twenty-one times less than that of the full moon.[564] Its colour was described as "of an intense luminous silver, with a bluish tinge, similar to the light of an electric arc."[565] Its spectrum was comparatively simple. Very few bright lines besides those of hydrogen and coronium, and apparently no dark ones, stood out from the prismatic background.
"The marked structural features of the corona, as presented by the negatives" taken by Professors Nipher and Charroppin, were the filaments and the streamers. The filaments issued from polar calottes of 20° radius.
"The impression conveyed to the eye," Professor Pritchett wrote,[566] "is that the equatorial stream of denser coronal matter extends across and through the filaments, simply obscuring them by its greater brightness. The effect is just as if the equatorial belt were superposed upon, or passed through, the filamentary structure. There is nothing in the photographs to prove that the filaments do not exist all round the sun.[567] The testimony from negatives of different lengths of exposure goes to show that the equatorial streamers are made up of numerous interlacing parts inclined at varying angles to the sun's equator."