Word: solar
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Everyone takes it for granted that the sun will go on shining until he dies-and, as a matter of lesser interest, for a long time after he dies. Astrophysicists, who believe the solar star-stuff has been hot for billions of years and will be so for billions of years more, have long cudgeled their brains for a reason why. Most favored of recent theories is that hydrogen is the fuel. It is known that the sun does not "burn" hydrogen, in the sense of releasing stored chemical energy as from coal; it physically changes fragments of hydrogen atoms...
Professor Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard Observatory, will preside at the morning session. Dr. Donald H. Mensal will speak on "Problems of the Solar Atmosphere...
Though lunar eclipses are less frequent than solar eclipses, more people see them because the darkened moon is visible from a whole hemisphere of earth. Totality of this week's lunar eclipse lasted 1 hr. 23 min. For a brief interval on the Atlantic seaboard a remarkable phenomenon was on view. The moon rose, fully eclipsed, six minutes before sunset. Thus for that time both bodies were visible where there was a clear view from horizon to horizon. Explanation...
Since the sun is a variable star, it is important that solar astrophysicists know how much the sun's energy radiation varies from day to day. The daily radiation output is usually measured with instruments called silver-disk pyrheliometers in which the sun's radiation is transformed into heat measurable in calories. A solar recording station should be high, dry, nearly dustless, nearly hazeless. The Smithsonian Institution has two solar outposts at Table Mountain in California and Mt. Montezuma in Chile. Last week the Smithsonian announced that it would start a new solar observatory atop Burro Mountain...
...Shapley was on the committees on stellar parallaxes, stellar photometry, variable stars, nebulae and globular clusters, and stellar statistics. Dr. Bok was on the committees on stellar statistics and on stellar radial velocities. Dr. Menzel was on the committees on solar radiation, solar eclipses, and spectral photometry...