Newest of the college Observatory's outposts is the Solar Station at Climax, Colorado, operated, since 1940, under the joint auspices of the Observatory and the University of Colorado. Equipped with the first Lyot coronagraph in the Western Hemisphere, an instrument which enables astronomers to observe the corona of the sun without waiting for an eclipse, the Climax station is situated at an elevation of 11,520 feet above sea level, a higher altitude than that at which fliers are advised to use oxygen.

Officials in War Effort. . .

In 1942, the College Observatory staff went to war practically on mass. The highly diversified are of modern war-face had great need of their specialized talents; and while the Observatory found itself almost deserted, they helped out-race enemy scientists in the perfection of such technical, but still immensely vital, devices as Loran and aerial photography.

Amatenrs, long encouraged by College Observatory officialdom, also found themselves in great demand in war activities, especially in the fabrication work on optical parts. Also, every key man in Barker's Observatory Optical Project was originally an amateur telescope maker.

With the war ended, the Observatory, besides sponsoring two College amateur groups, the Bond astronomical club and the telescope Makers of Boston, again assumes its full role as clearing-house for all amateur and professional astronomic information in the Western Hemisphere.

In addition to these varied activities, the Observatory still finds time to serve as head-quarters for the American Association of Variable Star Observers, an organization of amateurs who have turned in more than a million reports since the Association's beginning in 1911, and to publish monthly its magazine. Sky and Telescope, for $500, mainly amateur, world-wide subscribers.

When the American Astronomic Society and the American Association for Advancement of Science convene at Cambridge two weeks hence, they will be toasting much more than 100 years of survival. They will be honoring an institution which has led the world through the tortuous paths of astronomic investigation.