<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><img alt="Photograph of one part of a telescope. It is gold in color. There is a circular part pointing right at the camera, perhaps where you might press your face to the telescope to look at the stars." title="Eyepiece of the telescope Samuel P. Langley borrowed from the U.S. Naval Observatory for two eclipse expeditions. It is now in the collections of the National Museum of American History (2006.0182.02)." height="413" width="550" style="width: 550px; height: 413px;" class="auto-caption media-element file-large" data-delta="1" rel="lightbox" src="http://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/styles/blog_image/public/1blog_ET2014-40987.jpg?itok=Z-CBBvBv" /></p><p>Something borrowed, something blue—that is what Samuel P. Langley, director of the Allegheny Observatory in Pennsylvania, was counting on in July 1878 as he waited on Pikes Peak, Colorado, for the wedding of light and shadow displayed by a total eclipse of the sun. At his eye was a telescope borrowed from the U.S. Naval Observatory. Over his head, a sky he reported to be a "deep and transparent blue."</p><p> <img alt="Photograph in color showing a telescope." title="Side view of the five-inch equatorial refractor, made by Alvan Clark & Sons in 1874." height="550" width="413" class="auto-caption media-element file-large" data-delta="9" rel="lightbox" src="http://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/styles/blog_image/public/2blog_ET2014-40974.jpg?itok=E5g4bAkn" /></p><p>The stint of fair weather was a welcome contrast to the preceding seven days of rain and hail, during which Langley had to transport all his equipment, including this five-inch equatorial refractor made by Alvan Clark & Sons, up Pikes Peak. The scope wasn't exactly light, a fact with which the donkeys tasked with hauling it up to some 14,000 feet would have surely agreed. In a desperate measure to protect the steel components of the telescope from water damage, Langley poured lard over it. If that weren't enough to turn one's stomach, the altitude was. Langley and others in his party severely suffered from "mountain sickness." He described the condition in his report to the U.S. Naval Observatory as a caution to future researchers who sought to obtain clearer observations in the thinner mountain air.</p><p>All this fuss over equipment is ironic considering Langley would spend the bulk of his time observing the total phase of the solar eclipse with his unaided eye. (Learn about <a href="https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/safety" target="_blank">eclipse safety</a>.) As soon as the moon completely blocked the bright disk of the sun, he sketched his impression of the shape and extent of the suddenly visible solar atmosphere, or corona. Because the corona is so much dimmer than the sun, an eclipse provides one of the easiest ways to observe it. Langley was surprised that the corona appeared dimmer and far more extended than he had seen before. In a coordinated effort organized by the U.S. Naval Observatory, many other observers at multiple locations also created sketches of the corona and submitted them for study and publication.</p><p><img alt="Drawing in black ink or pencil on white paper. A big circle with two small circles inside it. One is the sun. The sun has flaring lines coming out of it in one direction, at about 7 o'clock, angle-wise." title="Samuel P. Langley's sketch of the corona during the 1878 eclipse. Courtesy of Astronomical and Meteorological Observations, XXII, U.S. Naval Observatory." height="475" width="475" style="width: 475px; height: 475px;" class="auto-caption media-element file-large" data-delta="6" rel="lightbox" src="http://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/styles/blog_image/public/3blog_langley_close.jpg?itok=k9bReZjh" /></p><p><img alt="Black and white sketches made to represent corona in the eclipse." title="Sketches of the corona during the 1878 eclipse by various observers. Courtesy of Astronomical and Meteorological Observations, XXII, U.S. Naval Observatory." height="475" width="475" class="media-element file-default" data-delta="8" rel="lightbox" src="http://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/1878_eclipse_annimation.gif" /><br><em>Sketches of the corona during the 1878 eclipse by various observers. Courtesy of Astronomical and Meteorological Observations, XXII, U.S. Naval Observatory.</em></p><p>The real surprise came after Langley finished his sketch and looked through the telescope. He had only five seconds to observe an "extraordinary sharpness of filamentary structure" of the corona before the sun started to reappear. This structure would haunt him. Photographs taken during this and later eclipse expeditions failed to reproduce what he saw. Was it a figment of his imagination? One has but to look at the variety of drawings from the 1878 eclipse to see how questions of subjectivity could come to play.</p><p><img alt="White drawing on black background. Sun with lines coming out of it." title="Drawing made by Samuel P. Langley of the filamentary coronal structure he observed with the telescope in 1878. Courtesy of Astronomical and Meteorological Observations, XXII, U.S. Naval Observatory." height="375" width="475" class="auto-caption media-element file-media-original" data-delta="10" rel="lightbox" src="http://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/5blog_langley_structure_0.jpg" /></p><p>When Langley had a chance to witness another eclipse in May 1900, he decided to capture images of the corona with "photography upon a greater scale than any hitherto attempted." By then, he was the Secretary of the Smithsonian and head of its Astrophysical Observatory. He had considerably more resources at his disposal, including $4,000 from the government to study the eclipse. Langley formed the party from staff at the Smithsonian, Catholic University, the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, Williams College, and the U.S. Patent Office. And this time there would be no need to worry about steep mountain hiking, sickness, and freezing rain. The eclipse path crossed the small town of Wadesboro, North Carolina, about 400 miles from Washington, D.C., and accessible by train.</p><p>Since Wadesboro was an ideal place to observe the eclipse, other expeditions chose it, which meant a serious influx of astronomers. As "some slight return" for the hospitality extended to the team, the Smithsonian observers invited townspeople to look through a five-inch visual telescope to view the stars on clear nights. That scope was the same one that Langley had borrowed from the U.S. Naval Observatory for the 1878 eclipse. He borrowed it again.</p><p><img alt="Sepia-toned photograph of an outdoor scene. There is a wooden platform on the grass. On it, a man sits at a desk-like table and peers into a large telescope that is pointed at the sky. He wears a hat. In the background, a tent-like structure is visible." title="Samuel P. Langley in Wadesboro, North Carolina, observing the sun through the five-inch telescope borrowed from the U.S. Naval Observatory. The tent-like structure in the background is a section of the 135-foot focus camera used to photograph the corona during the eclipse. Photographic History Collection, National Museum of American History." height="305" width="402" style="width: 402px; height: 305px;" class="auto-caption media-element file-large" data-delta="2" rel="lightbox" src="http://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/styles/blog_image/public/6blog_1986.0711.0803.jpg?itok=imwHjn_M" /></p><p>This time, Langley wanted to record the detail he had glimpsed before. So the team made a really big camera. I mean big. The glass plate negatives it exposed were 30 by 30 inches. The camera lens was 12 inches in diameter and required 135 feet to focus. This "great lens" was borrowed from E. C. Pickering, director of Harvard College Observatory. (If you want to see the original, <a href="http://waywiser.rc.fas.harvard.edu/objects/16650/12inch-f135-doublet-objective-lens?ctx=39821f4f-c1dd-48ab-ac98-be5d75665447&idx=0" target="_blank">check out</a> Harvard's Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments.)</p><p><img alt="Photo during an eclipse. Black and white. Shows a part of a celestial body with a glow around it, including what appear to be two white flares." title="A section of a photograph taken in 1900 with the 135-foot focus camera showing some of the features observed in the solar corona. Smithsonian Publication 1439." height="295" width="550" style="width: 550px; height: 295px;" class="auto-caption media-element file-large" data-delta="3" rel="lightbox" src="http://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/styles/blog_image/public/7blog_corona_photo.JPG?itok=rM8ost1B" /></p><p>Borrowed telescope, borrowed lens—and this from the head of the Astrophysical Observatory of the Smithsonian? What a mooch! Well, hold on a second. Let's not be hasty to judge. It makes sense that Langley would want to use the same telescope in Wadesboro that he had used on Pikes Peak. That is good science. Minimize the variables so you can confidently ascribe any observed change. Borrowing large lenses and other telescopes also makes sense because his Astrophysical Observatory was more concerned with studying the various wavelengths of light from the sun than with making pictures of it. Langley was especially interested in parts of the solar spectrum that were not visible to the naked eye. He developed an instrument to measure infrared radiation, the bolometer. And the Wadesboro expedition was an early attempt to use such an instrument to study the solar corona. While Langley enjoyed the view through his borrowed telescope, two other researchers sat in a small hut and took readings from the bolometer.</p><p><img alt="Black and white photo. A man wearing a hat sits in a small room manipulating a device of some sort." title="The bolometer setup used in the 1900 eclipse in Wadesboro, North Carolina. Smithsonian Institution Archives, RU 95, Box 56, Folder 5." height="550" width="455" style="width: 455px; height: 550px;" class="auto-caption media-element file-large" data-delta="4" rel="lightbox" src="http://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/styles/blog_image/public/8blog_SIA-A3590.jpg?itok=rOA0ZnXr" /></p><p>Perhaps the excitement of this unfolding field of study was enough to cheer Langley up after he finished watching the 1900 eclipse. "To the writer's view with the 5-inch telescope the inner corona was filled with detail, but far less sharp and definite than he saw it on Pikes Peak in 1878," Langley later wrote. "Having in mind the wonderful structure seen with the same instrument in the clear mountain air twenty-two years before, the impression was a disappointing one." Humidity could have been to blame, or even changes in the sun itself. Whatever the cause of his disappointment, it is hard to believe that anyone could look upon this telescope, learn about the eclipse expeditions it was used for, and be disappointed.</p><p><img alt="Photograph in color. Part of a telescope. One large gear-like wheel with teeth seems to adjoin three smaller gear-like wheels with teeth. There is a center bar and horseshoe-shaped brace or body." title="A close-up of the mechanism for moving the 1874 Alvan Clark & Sons telescope." height="413" width="550" class="auto-caption media-element file-large" data-delta="5" rel="lightbox" src="http://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/styles/blog_image/public/9blog_ET2014-40979.jpg?itok=-Qe1h0dh" /></p><p><em>Kristen Frederick-Frost is curator of modern science in the Division of Medicine and Science. Planning to view the total solar eclipse this summer? The <a href="http://smithsonian-eclipse-app.simulationcurriculum.com/download.html" target="_blank">Smithsonian Eclipse app</a> is your interactive guide to the big event. </em></p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-related-user field-type-user-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Related Staff Member: </div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/users/frederickfrostk">FrederickFrostK</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-posted-date field-type-datetime field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Posted Date: </div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">Wednesday, August 16, 2017 - 08:00</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above clearfix"><h3 class="field-label">Categories: </h3><ul class="links"><li class="taxonomy-term-reference-0"><a href="/blog-tags/collections">From the Collections</a></li><li class="taxonomy-term-reference-1"><a href="/blog-tags/medicine-science">Medicine & Science</a></li></ul></div><div class="feedflare"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OSayCanYouSee?a=cKHsNnhwvrk:CABjU-C2hj4:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OSayCanYouSee?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OSayCanYouSee?a=cKHsNnhwvrk:CABjU-C2hj4:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OSayCanYouSee?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OSayCanYouSee?a=cKHsNnhwvrk:CABjU-C2hj4:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OSayCanYouSee?i=cKHsNnhwvrk:CABjU-C2hj4:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OSayCanYouSee?a=cKHsNnhwvrk:CABjU-C2hj4:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OSayCanYouSee?i=cKHsNnhwvrk:CABjU-C2hj4:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OSayCanYouSee?a=cKHsNnhwvrk:CABjU-C2hj4:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OSayCanYouSee?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OSayCanYouSee/~4/cKHsNnhwvrk" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>
