My impressions of the 2007 Solar Eclipse Conference - New 2007 Aug. 28, 23h UT
Overall, the Solar Eclipse Conference in Los Angeles Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 25-26, was quite successful. Besides my talk, Daniel Fischer gave a good talk about the "quest for Baily's beads", stressing the advantage of observing them near the path edges and referencing my talk. Also, Steve Edberg gave a talk about the best places to observe various eclipse phenomena, again noting that most phenomena are best seen from locations just inside the path edges, and he showed his own version of Tom Van Flandern's diagram showing this, and credited Tom with its origin. Andrew White (from the UK), who is going to put together the conference CD, said that he'll be travelling the next couple of weeks, and wanted to do his job soon after he returned, so we have a couple of weeks to try to correct the errors in some of our analyses. There were only a couple of minor questions about the radius results. I wanted to show one of our eclipse edge videos, but in the rush to leave for the meeting, I forgot to grab one of the tapes to show. When I get a chance, I'll digitize a few of them to post here. Other talks in the conference were interesting as well. Hana Druckmuellerova (Czech Republic) showed incredibly detailed processed images of the corona, much more detailed than I've seen before. These and other observations complement the space-based observations now being obtained; there is still value in ground- based observations of eclipses. I pointed out to the 3 attendees from the Czech Republic and one from Slovakia that they missed the ESOP meeting this same weekend in Slovakia. Xavier Jubier talked about the interesting eclipse mapping efforts that he's made. He pointed out that the last eclipse in Los Angeles was the 1724 eclipse that also passed over s. England and France (shortly before sunset) that Edmund Halley mapped (after his initial map of the 1715 eclipse; the 1724 eclipse was clouded out in the UK and France) and the next one will be in 200 years. I mentioned in the Q&A that IOTA was doing similar work with occultations, especially asteroidal occultations, but less systematically/very sporadically for lunar grazes, which are more like plotting eclipse path edges with some similar issues. Xavier expressed an interest in collaborating with IOTA mapping efforts, but warned that he might not answer email quickly since he was busy with many other things, including preparation for a trip to Antarctica in February. Joel Harris talked about his eclipse experiences, then brought up a point that we discussed at the IOTA meeting, the need to get more young people involved. He said that for future eclipse expeditions that he would organize, he would allocate a fraction of the funds collected to pay for a young person to join the expedition, selecting the person with a short essay contest, and have 4 or 5 others in the group read the essays to judge the contest. He encouraged other expeditions to do the same thing. In the Q & A's, I said that IOTA had similar concerns, and pointed out that, while not as dramatic as solar eclipses, occultations were much more frequent, with many more local opportunities, so that they might serve as a way to get more young people involved, to do something of real scientific value. Other speakers showed views of China and the Novosibirsk area during scouting trips for the upcoming eclipses. Northwestern China is much more civilized than I thought, with good 2-lane paved highways and adequate hotels. In contrast, the eclipse path area in Mongolia is very primitive, with only rudimentary tracks and no hotels and few other facilities; an expedition going there is taking large tents, asking those joining them to bring their own sleeping bags, and is planning on taking at least a week to get there (and a similar amount of time for the return) from Ulaan Bator. David Dunham, 2007 Aug. 28, 6 pm EDT Phones home 301-474-4722; office 240-228-5609; cell 301-526-5590 e-mail david.dunham@jhuapl.edu home e-mail: dunham@starpower.net .