On Oct 2, 1959, I was a first-year student at Harvard, taking a freshman seminar in astronomy from Prof. Donald H. Menzel, a major eclipse scientist and the director of the Harvard College Observatory. He arranged to borrow an Eastern Airlines plane to take us to totality, high over Marblehead, MA, and out to sea. One overslept, so 11 of us first years were on the plane, along with him and with some other people from the observatory. I was, obviously, inspired to go on in eclipse studies. Among the others in the class were John Leibacher, a solar astronomer who is now the editor of the journal Solar Physics (and from whom I heard yesterday and today about an article just accepted with Greek colleagues about spectra from the 2010 total solar eclipse); Ken Janes, an astronomer at Boston University; and Donald Goldsmith, an astronomer and astronomical educator.
At
http://web.williams.edu/astronomy/eclipse/eclipse1959/
I have posted maps from USNO showing the path of totality near the US, a photo from Goldsmith showing the shadow, a cartoon-style doodle (the frontispiece of my Ph.D. thesis in 1969) of the type for which Menzel was well known, and links to an article about how this 1959 eclipse in Europe was important to the founding of the current observatory in the Canary Islands and to my article about Menzel and eclipses from the time of the 100th anniversary of his birth. -Jay Pasachoff, December 29, 2011.
Showing posts with label Eclipse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eclipse. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
1963 Total Solar Eclipse -- New York
From New York city the eclipse magnitude reached 0.89. These B&W images were obviously taken from the Empire State Building. It was a very warm and rather humid day and as can be seen on the film, the Sun played hide and seek with both the Moon and the clouds. I remember the late Dr. Fred Hess telling me that NBC Radio sent their long-time newscaster, Ben Grauer to the Hayden Planetarium as part of the eclipse coverage that was presented on their weekend show "Monitor." "It was amazing," said Fred. "The eclipsed Sun seemed to be behind the clouds most of the time, but every time the network threw it to Ben and I, the Sun broke through and we were able to provide an adequate description of what was visible for a national radio audience!"
I just realized that at 0:53 of this film, that the gentleman using the Newtonian
reflecting telescope is "probably" the late Abe Oshinsky from the Observing Group
("O.G.") of the Amateur Astronomers' Association.
In fact, I recognized the telescope first . . . then recognized Abe. He was much younger here than when I knew him in the 1970's/early '80's. John Pazmino, John Bortle or Sam Storch could probably verify this. In fact . . . I believe that Sam ended up with Abe's telescope -- the very same one pictured on this film -- after he passed away about 30-years ago. -Joe Rao
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For July 20, 1963, I was between college and Harvard graduate school. My soon-to-be grad-school colleagues Jim Pollack and Joe Kornblum joined me in a drive up to Quebec to see the eclipse. We wound up in Gentilly, about halfway between Montreal and Quebec City, and I recall seeing totality from the side of a river as we maneuvered among clouds in the sky.
At http://web.williams.edu/astronomy/eclipse/eclipse1963/ I have posted a USNO map, a partial-eclipse projected image I took, and a picture of the three of us along with an Air Force camera belonging to the Harvard College Observatory that Menzel lent us.
-Jay Pasachoff, December 29, 2011.
1972 Total Solar Eclipse 1972 -- CBS News (Part 2 of 2)
Dr. Franklyn Branley, who was the Chairman of the Hayden Planetarium in 1972, led visitors in Central Park on a solar eclipse watch, as they viewed the partial eclipse of the Sun (magnitude 0.795) during the mid-late afternoon hours on July 10, 1972. Members of the New York Amateur Observers' Society, led by Glenn Schneider were in Cap Chat, Quebec for this event. Unfortunately, they were clouded out of totality. I was also in Cap Chat, and had a fortuitous break in the cloud cover and managed to catch about 90 seconds of the 137 seconds of total eclipse. --Joe Rao
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEplot/SEplot1951/SE1972Jul10T.GIF
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