As we prepare for the next major solar eclipse in North America – mark your calendars for the 8th of April, 2024! – it’s fun to look back at Observatory records from previous eclipses. On May 10th, 1994, nearly 300 people congregated at the Observatory to take in the spectacle of a partial eclipse.
It’s worth noting that getting the full experience of totality requires a perfect combination of timing, location, and decent weather. Not simple.
This particular event was an annular eclipse, in which the moon’s apparent diameter was less than that of the sun, so that there was always a portion of the sun’s disc visible, creating an annulus (ring) when viewed along the path of greatest eclipse. Still amazing.
Some storage containers simply have more entertaining labels than others. Case in point: the cardboard box labeled “Astronauts & Space Toys,” which is neither large nor sturdy enough to contain a real astronaut, let alone several.
A find like this is just begging for exploration. We refer to a lot of things around here as “toys,” but these are the real deal.
Astronaut pieces.
There are buckets – buckets! – of astronauts inside! Or possibly pieces of astronauts. It’s unclear.
There is a choking hazard warning. One can reasonably assume that choking hazards in space are worse than here on Earth.
Buckets upon buckets.
The jackpot: toys! Fewer astronauts than advertised, but a substantially higher proportion of Lunar Module Eagles and Hubble Space Telescopes than expected. (Always entertaining to write those as plurals.) Chalk it up in the win column.
If this is how you convince the next generation that astronomy is cool, sign us up.
Astronomy at Bucknell is not just for the undergraduate students, but for the wider community, too. With a whole slew of telescopes to explore the skies, the department sometimes runs family nights and other outreach programs. Local families, summer camps, and others can – weather permitting – have the opportunity to explore constellations, deep sky objects, planets, and sometimes even the crater-riddled surface of the moon.
For those at home, an ordinary pair of binoculars works quite well for that last one. Pick a night when the moon is between new and full, and look to the transition zone between the light and dark sides. The light rays raking across the surface dramatically emphasize the texture. The full moon’s straight-on illumination is less compelling, and, well, there’s not much to see on the new moon.
In order to help explain the skies to the public, the Observatory has a planisphere, built by one of the University’s Presidential Fellowship students with the help of the shop techs. A flattened portion of the celestial sphere rotates, enabling a view of the major constellations at any day and time throughout the year. Polaris, at the center, stays steady while the rest of the sky spins about.
For added excitement, a series of colorful LED lights ring the perimeter, making the stars and imaginary constellation lines glow in the etched acrylic.
