Monthly Archives March 2021

MAS April Monthly Meeting

Theory and Observation in the Pseudo-Annular Eclipse reported near Vienna on 17 June 1433

Prof. Michael Shank

This talk analyzes a solar eclipse that is described as annular, but that other reports and modern calculations show to have been very total. I explore the reasons for this odd state of affairs, since most eclipse observers are impressed by the darkness, not what’s happening immediately around the Sun. I argue that the report comes from a theoretically sophisticated observer with access to a 14th c. annular eclipse report that shaped his observation, which was then used to refute the concentric-sphere astronomy of al-Bitruji, an influential 12-13th century Arab astronomer.

Michael H...

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MAS March Monthly Meeting

Teaching Astronomy and Nineteenth-century American Catholic Higher Education – a talk by Dana Freiburger

Dana Freiburger

Pretend it is 1815 and you are a student at Georgetown College in Washington, D.C., could you, with the aid of a terrestrial globe, determine the latitude and longitude of Washington City? Or maybe the more taxing problem to find the time of the sun’s rising and setting, and the length of the day and night at any place? These and over a hundred other problems awaited you in an 1812 book on the use of the globes and practical astronomy employed at this Jesuit college founded in 1789. Written by the Irish-born Jesuit James Wallace, this volume is one example of how the sciences like astronomy enjoyed a confirmed place in American Catholic colleges in the nineteenth century...

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