Menzel and Eclipses

Soon after I first met Donald Menzel, we observed a total solar eclipse together. I am eternally grateful to Donald and Florence Menzel for a wide variety of things they have done for me, intellectually and personally, so it was a particular pleasure to be invited to speak on “Menzel and eclipses”. The day of the Menzel Symposium was the anniversary of a famous 11 May eclipse, one plotted by Edmond Halley. See Pasachoff Jay M. , “Halley and his maps of the total eclipses of 1715 and 1724”, Astronomy & geophysics, xl (1999), 2.18–2.21.

Menzel's Freshman Seminar, Fall 1959: Four who became astronomers: Ken Janes, Professor and former Chair, Boston University; John Leibacher, former Director, National Solar Observatory; Don Goldsmith, former professor, astronomy author; Jay Pasachoff, Professor and Observatory Director, Williams College and, during 1969–70, Donald H. Menzel Research Fellow in the Harvard College Observatory, a position funded in honour of D.H.M. for a five-year term by his friend Edwin Land of the Polaroid Corporation. Other members: Nan (Evans) Krien, daughter of Jack Evans, director of the Sacramento Peak Observatory; John Fryer, now of Washington, DC; Richard Goodman, now professor of mathematics, University of Miami; Tony Rossmann, now a lawyer, San Francisco; Margaret (Horton) Weiler, now of Bradford, NH; K. Paul Smith, Aloha, OR; Aquila Chase, now of Santa Barbara, CA; Jeff Hill, Washington, DC, lawyer, Office of Management and Budget.

Quotations throughout will be taken from Menzel's unpublished Autobiography (1974), a 681-page double-spaced typescript. I thank Florence Menzel, Elizabeth Menzel Davis, and Suzy Menzel Lindeman Snyder for permission to read and to quote from this autobiography. Copies have been deposited at the Niels Bohr Library, American Institute of Physics, College Park, Maryland, and the Harvard University Archives.

Menzel's first edition of the Peterson field guide to the stars and planets was published in 1964. I wrote the second edition, which was published as Menzel and Pasachoff in 1983, the third edition, which was published as Pasachoff and Menzel in 1992, and the fourth edition, which was published in my name in 2000. The book is published by Houghton Mifflin, which was purchased by Vivendi Universal in 2001.

Menzel , Autobiography, 150a.

Menzel , Autobiography, 176.

Menzel , Autobiography, 210, 219–20.

Menzel D. H. , “Rare earths in the flash spectrum”, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, xxxix (1927), 359–60; Bowen I. S. and Menzel D. H. , “Forbidden lines in the flash spectrum”, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, xl (1928), 332–40; and a preliminary look at an eclipse track in Menzel D. H. , “The total solar eclipse of May 9, 1928”, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, xl (1928), 411–13. The 1930 expedition, including “Dr. D. H. Menzel, Assistant Astronomer, Lick Observatory”, was described in Moore J. H. , “The Crocker Eclipse Expedition of the Lick Observatory to Camptonville, California, April 28, 1930”, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, lii (1930), 131–40. Menzel's work on the 1930 eclipse spectrograms was published as Moore J. H. and Menzel D. H. , “The green coronal line at the eclipse of April 28, 1930”, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, xlii (1930), 182–4; and Moore J. H. and Menzel D. H. , “Preliminary results on the chromospheric spectrum observed at the April, 1930, eclipse”, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, xlii (1930), 251.

Menzel D. H. , “A study of the solar chromosphere based upon photographs of the flash spectrum taken by Dr. William Wallace Campbell, Director of the Lick Observatory, at the total solar eclipses of the Sun in 1898, 1900, 1905 and 1908”, Publications of the Lick Observatory, xvii (1931).

Philip Davis A. G. and Koopmann Rebecca A. (eds), The starry universe: The Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin centenary (Schenectady, NY, 2001).

Goldberg L. , “Donald Howard Menzel”, Sky & telescope, liii (1977), 244–51. Goldberg and Aller L. H. published an analysis of Menzel's work, “Donald Howard Menzel, April 11, 1901 — December 14, 1976”, Biographical memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, lx (1991), 149–67. A picture of Menzel appears on an unnumbered page facing p. 149. Next to their listing of Menzel's 1931 Lick publications paper, they have a footnote stating “Authors' note: This was probably Menzel's single most important publication.” Shorter obituaries appeared as Owen Gingerich, Menzel Donald H. , Physics today, xxx (1977), 96–97; Kopal Z. , “Obituary: D. H. Menzel”, Nature, cclxvii (1977), 189; and anonymously under the title “ Menzel Donald H. ” in Astronomie, xci (1977), 50. See also the longer discussion of Menzel's work in connection with his receipt of the Janssen medal, in Astronomie, xc (1976), 456. The obituary in The Boston Globe for 15 December 1976 cites 15 total solar eclipses though James Cornell in The centerline, iv/3 (December 1976), a Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory publication, says “Menzel would witness 16 solar totalities”. The New York Times's obituary appeared on 16 December 1976: “In October of this year, he would have viewed his 17th had not the doctors kept him in bed. Regardless, he directed the operations in Australia by teletype.” A booklet containing “Remarks at the Memorial Service, April 19, 1977”, has reminiscences by Payne-Gaposchkin Cecilia , Baker James G. , Feiss Julian W. , Whipple Fred L. , Evans John W. , Taves Ernest H. , and Goldberg Leo . Goldberg writes: “He continued to be fiercely loyal to his former students long after they had departed from Cambridge. I never saw the letters of recommendation he wrote for me, but Harlow Shapley once told me he had read one that even made him squirm a bit”.

Menzel , Autobiography, 399. See also Moore J. H. and Menzel D.H. , “The green coronal line at the eclipse of April 28, 1930”, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, xlii (1930), 182–4.

Menzel D. H. , “Report on the jumping-film spectrographs”, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, xliv (1932), 356–8 + Plates VII and VIII; part of Moore J. H. , “The Lick Observatory-Crocker Eclipse Expedition to Fryeburg, Maine, August 31, 1932”, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, xliv (1932), 341–60 + Plates IV-VIII.

Menzel D. H. and Cillié G. , “Hydrogen emission in the chromosphere”, Astrophysical journal [hereafter: ApJ], lxxxv (1937), 88–106.

“Gabriel Gideon Cillié, 1910–2000”, Astronomy and geophysics, xlii (2001), 2.37–2.38.

Birge R. T. and Menzel D. H. , “The relative abundance of the oxygen isotopes, and the basis of the atomic weight system”, Physical review, xxxvii (1931), 1669–70. See also Menzel D. H. , “The cosmic abundance of hydrogen isotope H2”, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, xliv (1932), 41–46.

Urey H. , Brickwedde F. G. , and Murphy G. M. , “A hydrogen isotope of mass 2”, Physical review, xxxix (1932), 164–5.

Brickwedde F. G. , “Harold Urey and the discovery of deuterium”, Physics today, xxxv, no. 9 (September 1982), 34–39.

Because I have been investigating the faint radio spin-flip line of interstellar deuterium since 1972, it was a surprise and pleasure to find out that Menzel's theoretical work led to the discovery of that important isotope. See Pasachoff J. M. and Fowler W. A. , “Deuterium in the universe”, updated from Scientific American, no. 230 (May 1974), 108–18, in Particle physics in the cosmos, ed. by Carrigan Richard A. Jr , and Trower Peter W. (New York, 1988), 151–63.

Menzel D. H. and Pekeris C. L. , “Absorption coefficients and hydrogen line intensities”, Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, xcvi (1935), 77–111.

The papers were republished as Menzel D. H. , Selected papers on physical properties in ionized plasma (New York, 1962).

Menzel D. H. and Sen H. K. , “Transfer of radiation”, ApJ, ex (1950), 1–11; “II. Radiative transfer in absorption lines”, ApJ, cxiii (1951), 482–9; “III. Reflection effect in eclipsing binaries”, ApJ, cxiii (1951), 490–5.

Menzel D. H. , “The design and operation of the Harvard-M.I.T. 1936 eclipse equipment”, Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, cv (1936), 87–98. See also Menzel D. H. and Boyce J. C. , “Eclipse at Ak Bulak: The Harvard-M.I.T. Expedition to Russia reports on its experiences and results”. Technology review, xxxix (1936), 18–21, 36, 38, 40, 42, 44 (“All photographic processes were carried out in water hauled by camel cart from a distant stream. Filtering twigs, dirt, and even minnows and pollywogs from four barrels of water proved to be no small job…”); and Irvine Gardner C. , “Observing an eclipse in Asiatic Russia”, National Geographic, lxxi (1937), 179–97 and Plate XVI facing p. 179.

Such as my own expedition to Zambia which included thirteen students and five staff with two tons of equipment for the 21 June 2001 total solar eclipse. See reports of current expeditions through links on the homepage of the International Astronomical Union Working Group on Eclipses at http://www.williams.edU/astronomy/IAU_eclipses and http://www.eclipses.info and http://www.eclipses.info.

Based on observations from the 1936 eclipse: Petrie William and Menzel Donald H. , “The wave lengths of new coronal lines”, ApJ, xcvi (1942), 395–8; he also has some mention of his 1936 results in Astronomical journal, lii (1946), 47, a long abstract from the 1–2 February 1946, American Astronomical Society meeting held in New York City. Donald Osterbrock has found biographical information about Petrie in American men of science. Born in 1914, he got his Master's in Physics in 1942 and his Ph.D. in 1943 at Harvard. Later in life, he was Chief Scientist of the Canadian Defense Research Board and carried out auroral research. Osterbrock concludes, from the writing style, that Petrie may have made the measurements in the summer of 1942 and written the paper. Menzel was busy with war-related projects at the time. No doubt, other scientists also published results based on the joint Harvard-MIT expedition that Menzel had headed.

Menzel D. H. and Pasachoff J. M. , “On the obliteration of strong Fraunhofer lines by electron scattering in the solar corona”, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, lxxx (1968), 458–61.

Cram L. E. , “Determination of the temperature of the solar corona from the spectrum of the electron-scattering continuum”, Solar physics, xlviii (1976), 3–19.

Ichimoto K. , Kumagai K. , Sano I. , Kobiki T. , Sakurai T. , and Munõz A. , “Measurement of coronal electron temperature at the total solar eclipse on 1994 November 3”, Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan, xlviii (1996), 545–54 and Plates 15–16.

See daily solar observations from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) at http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov and at http://www.spaceweather.com.

Menzel , Autobiography, 426.

Menzel D. H. , “Eclipse of the Sun of February 15, 1961 — Eclipse over the Mediterranean”, Sky & telescope, xxi (1961), 192–6; “Eclipse of the Sun of February 15, 1961 — Further February eclipse observations”, ibid., 263–8; “Eclipse of the Sun of February 15, 1961 — Soviet solar eclipse observations”, ibid., 328–9.

Menzel D. H. , “Annular eclipse of May 20: On the Athens-Cape Sunion road”, Sky & telescope, xxxii (1966), 81–82.

Menzel D. H. , “Eclipse over the Andes”, Sky & telescope, xxxiii (1967), 11–15.

Menzel D. H. and Pasachoff J. M. , “Solar eclipse follow-up: Polarization of the corona” (eclipse of 22 September 1968), Sky & telescope, xxxvi (1968), 380–1.

Menzel , Autobiography, 429–30.

Menzel D. H. and Pasachoff J. M. , “Solar eclipse”, National Geographic, cxxxviii/2 (August 1970), 222–33. We also had a more technical report in Menzel D. H. and Pasachoff J. M. , “Studies of the outer solar corona at the eclipse of 7 March 1970”, National Geographic Society research reports: 1969 projects (1970).

Menzel Donald H. and Pasachoff Jay M. , “The outer corona at the eclipse of 7 March 1970”, Nature, ccxxvi (1970), 1143–4. Menzel Donald H. and Pasachoff Jay M. , “Eclipse instrumentation for the solar corona”, Applied optics, ix (1970), 2626–30.

di Cicco D. , Sky & telescope, xlvii/3 (March 1974), cover, 145, 147. The annular eclipse of 24 December 1973 was photographed from Playa Flamingo, Costa Rica.

Pasachoff Jay M. , “Solar-eclipse science: Still going strong”, Sky & telescope, ci (2001), February issue, 40–47.

Menzel , Autobiography, 439.