Astronomers no longer must wait for the few minutes of a solar eclipse, but can produce their own, using a technique described by Donald H. Menzel, Paine Professor of Practical Astronomy, in a book published today.
Menzel's Our Sun presents information about the sun, gained since the invention of the coronagraph or artificial "sun-eclipser." With it, astronomers can create an "eclipse" in the laboratory every clear day and record it on film.
In the device a disk is placed where an image of the sun and its corona is focused by a lens. This disk acts like the moon during a natural eclipse of the sun by blocking out or eclipsing the bright solar disk.
Tomorrow morning Menzel will see the real thing, weather permitting, when he takes his Freshman Seminar students and Observatory officials in a DC-6 to view a natural eclipse, the first in the Boston area for 300 years. It requires the shortest expedition ever for Harvard astronomers to study a solar eclipse.
Read more in News
Editors for this Issue:Recommended Articles
-
Astronomers Meet at Observatory For Conferences on Radio WavesA complete chart of the solar radio spectrum, compiled by Donald H. Menzel, Director of the Harvard Observatory, will be
-
CORONA THEORY OF SUN REVOLUTIONIZEDOn August 12, the first definitive proof that the solar corona is not made up chiefly of flaming coronal streamers
-
SIBERIAN ECLIPSE OF SUN WILL BE STUDIEDScience's most modern instruments for detecting rare chemical gases and elements will be used by Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of
-
University Astronomers Plan Trip To Ceylon Next Month for EclipseThree University astronomers will fly to Ceylon early next month to study the sun's corona during the longest solar eclipse
-
Menzel, Seminar to See Sun's Eclipse by PlaneDonald H. Menzel, Paine Professor of Practical Astronomy, will take his 12-student Freshman Seminar and several University astronomers in a
-
Harvard's Eclipse Expedition.Within the past two or three years several expeditions have been sent from Harvard to various parts of the continent
