The English agreed to let his expedition through, but ultimately the risky trip was for naught-the professor had calculated the path of totality wrong and the group ended up just outside of its range and missed the show.īy the 19th century, chasing eclipses was considered “nothing new for astronomers,” according to the American Astronomical society. Following Halley’s breakthrough, a new level of accuracy opened up traveling possibilities for eclipse chasers.īut even after Halley, mistakes were often made. Infamously, during the Revolutionary War, a Harvard Professor named Samuel Williams led a group to enemy lines to observe the total solar eclipse of 1780. While ancient societies including the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Chinese and the Maya had developed the ability to predict solar eclipse patterns, it wasn't until 1715 that astronomer Sir Edmond Halley, employing Isaac Newton's law of gravity, allowed people to predict exactly where eclipses would occur and how long they would last. Five hundred years later, Aveni notes, one intrepid observer even kept a record of his trip traveling from Aleppo to Cairo to time the 1433 solar eclipse. As early as 8 BC, Chinese astrologers were able to start making accurate predictions of total solar eclipses, writes astronomer and scholar Anthony Aveni, and by the 9th century AD, professional eclipse watchers were tasked with recording exact happenings in Baghdad and Cairo. NASA reports that ancient observers took note of solar eclipses at least as far back as 2500 BC, as evidenced by surviving records from ancient Babylon and China. The Olympia’s voyage may have been the first cruise dedicated to putting people in the path of the eclipse, but the voyagers aboard the Olympia were embarking a tradition centuries old: eclipse chasing.Ĭall them umbraphiles, coronaphiles, eclipsoholics, ecliptomaniacs or just eclipse-chasers, around the world, humans with a cosmic fascination have been following solar eclipses as early as they were able to chart and predict the patterns of the sun and the moon. When it finally came, the sun’s corona dazzling like a ring of fire, the ship’s band played “You Are My Sunshine.” Passengers waiting on the deck kept their eyes affixed to the horizon. The temperature dropped 25 degrees in the 15 minutes leading up to the eclipse. The ship sought clear skies in the path of totality, the zone where the new moon lines up perfectly between the Earth and the sun, blocking the path of the sun’s rays to the Earth’s surface. They were on their way to witness a total eclipse of the sun, which would start in Siberia and travel across Canada, ending over the Atlantic Ocean, and in front of their eyes, that June. ![]() Scientists-amateur and professional-set sail from New York on board the 23,000‐ton luxury liner Olympia with a course charted to a specific point in the open Atlantic Ocean. In the summer of 1972, 834 passengers and one cat embarked on a voyage into darkness.
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