[Chaos-l] Fwd: Historical solar eclipse maps

Fri Mar 4 12:50:08 EST 2011

I've given it a bit of thought and noticed that Santee State Park,
right off I-95, is well within the path of the Eclipse and within a
couple hundred yards of centerline path.

Closest astronomy club I know of is in Columbia but they are right in
the path anyway so I suspect they'l have their own events. It's a ways
away but might be something we could consider caravaning down to and
offer up some sort of educational program to the rangers there.

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEgoogle/SEgoogle2001/SE2017Aug21Tgoogle.html
http://www.southcarolinaparks.com/park-finder/state-park/535.aspx

On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Jayme Hanzak <jhanzak at unctv.org> wrote:
> From
>
> Dr. Barbara Becker.
>
>
>
> Jayme Hanzak
> CHAOS President
>
> CHAOS
> P.O. Box 3001
> Chapel Hill, NC 27514-0842
> http://www.rtpnet.org/chaos/
>
> -----------------------------
> Dear Jayme, this message recently came in on the History of Astronomy
> listserv.
>
> I thought you and some of your members would be interested in Zeiler's
> website.
>
> Has anyone in the group begun to think about the 2017 eclipse?  The
> centerline will pass through SC.
>
> all the best,
>
> Barb.
>
>>Date:         Tue, 1 Mar 2011 15:21:33 -0700
>>From: Michael Zeiler <eclipsemaps at gmail.com>
>>Subject: Historical solar eclipse maps
>>To: HASTRO-L at listserv.wvu.edu
>>
>>Greetings,
>>
>>I'm a new member to this list and I'd like to introduce my web site,
>>www.eclipse-maps.com
>>
>>It's not yet complete, but it does contain a substantial number of
>>historical solar eclipse maps and newly published eclipse maps, about 1,300
>>maps in all. The two pages that presently have real content are the History
>>and Gallery pages. The historical maps are presented in albums that are
>>mostly organized in decadal ranges with commentary on the significant maps,
>>personalities, and progress of that era. (Apologies if you have a slow
>>internet connection; the albums may be slow to load because they contain
>>many high-resolution images)
>>
>>I'm a cartographer and not a historian. For two years, I've been combining
>>my professional skills with my personal interest in solar eclipses to
>>produce new eclipse maps. My initial motivation was that I was not
>> satisfied
>>with many of the available solar eclipse maps. While our computerized
>>technology makes it relatively easy for one to produce an eclipse map, the
>>resulting cartographic products are often deficient. I then took an
>> interest
>>in the history of eclipse maps because many old solar eclipse maps have
>>superb cartographic designs that modern cartographers can learn from. This
>>interest and a budding collection of eclipse maps led to the creation of
>>this web site two months ago. For me, this is applied history: I am
>> directly
>>learning from past masters to improve my craft.
>>
>>Eclipse maps are fascinating because they combine spatial and temporal
>>information and are among the earliest maps to do so. Eclipse maps are also
>>audacious because they give very precise forecasts that any interested
>>person can act on to witness the greatest natural spectacle on earth.
>> Edmund
>>Halley's eclipse map of 1715 was perhaps the first to give reasonably
>>precise and actionable predictions on a map in advance of a total solar
>>eclipse.
>>
>>Some of the historical questions I'm interested in are:
>>
>>- What was the scientific and cultural milieu that produced the earliest
>>known eclipse map of 1654 and sparked the flowering of eclipse maps of the
>>early 18th century? While the phenomena of eclipses were well understood in
>>antiquity by some such as Ptolemy, why did it take until the Enlightenment
>>to conceptualize the idea of an eclipse map? And if Kepler's laws of
>>planetary motion of the early 17th century were necessary, why the
>>half-century gap before the first eclipse map?
>>
>>- There are several types of temporal data associated with an eclipse:
>>timings of the four eclipse contacts and time of greatest eclipse, and
>>durations of the total/annular phases as well as semidurations of the
>>partial phases. A single map cannot reasonably present all of this data and
>>eclipse maps instead present a subset of this temporal information. There
>> is
>>an interesting progression in the selection of temporal data that is
>>displayed on historical eclipse maps. What guided this evolution of the
>>presentation of temporal eclipse data?
>>
>>- Another eclipse feature that is frequently mapped is the magnitude of the
>>partial phases of a solar eclipse. Early eclipse maps show isomagnitudes of
>>"digits", divisions of the occulted fraction of the sun's diameter into
>>twelfths. Then starting in the mid-19th century, the display of
>>isomagnitudes on eclipse maps took a hiatus and were rarely present on
>>eclipse maps. When isomagnitudes started reappearing on eclipse maps in the
>>20th century, with only one exception that I've found, isomagnitudes on all
>>eclipse maps since are divided into tenths or one-hundredths. What caused
>>the hiatus of isomagnitude displays on eclipse maps? Was the conversion to
>>tenths instead of twelfths ("digits") influenced by the movement of the
>>adoption of SI units?
>>
>>- Since the areal coverage of eclipses span a sizable fraction of the
>>earth's surface, selecting an appropriate map projection is a challenge. In
>>the 19th century, it seems that the British Nautical Almanac preferred the
>>Mercator projection, which has qualities useful for navigation but which is
>>a generally poor choice for eclipse maps. The French Connaissance des Temps
>>and the American Ephemeris tended to prefer the orthographic and
>>stereographic projections. Many recent eclipse maps have reverted to the
>>Mercator projection, a puzzling and poor choice. I think the second ever
>>eclipse map of 1676 got it right; the stereographic projection is the best
>>overall projection for mapping the full extent of an eclipse. There are
>>clearly several factors involved: ease of construction of a projection,
>>purpose of the enclosing document (usually almanacs), cultural preferences
>>(and latitude of home region?).
>>
>>If anyone on this list has special knowledge on the history of eclipse
>> maps,
>>or access to maps and research which might be added to or referenced in the
>>archive of www.eclipse-maps.com, I'd appreciate hearing from you.
>>
>>
>>best regards, Michael Zeiler
>>Santa Fe, New Mexico
>
>
> --
> Dr. Barbara J. Becker
> History Department
> 200 Murray Krieger Hall
> University of California, Irvine
> Irvine   California   92697
> http://eee.uci.edu/clients/bjbecker
>
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