March Meeting

Rescheduled from January

Five members of Skyscrapers traveled to New Mexico for the first of two solar eclipses occurring within a year: a beautiful annular eclipse. Led by Rick Lynch, Denise Turco, Jim Hendrickson, Francine Jackson and Mercedes Rivero-Hudec set up, with hundreds of others, including former Skyscrapers Jack Szelka and his wife Ileen from Arizona, at the Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque for the event. The balcony of the Monument had a perfect sightline, and telescopes and cameras were easily set up.

For those who didn’t have any, NASA members handed out eclipse glasses, and streamed the event. The National Park Service had two kiosks, one of which had a volunteer man a Sunspotter, and another giving out information for visitors looking for other places to visit. Plus, Carle Pieters, formerly at Brown, brought out samples of both Moon and Mars rocks for all to touch.

The sky couldn’t have been better: a perfect sky, with no clouds in the area. The only objects that shared the sky with the Sun and the Moon were hot air balloons, as the annual festival was happening at the same time. Fortunately, none of them eclipsed the Sun as the real event was taking place.

And, it did! Rick had chosen Albuquerque as it had the longest time for annularity: 4 minutes, 40 seconds. No clouds snuck in during the time; it was a perfect eclipse.

The Skyscrapers who made the trip will be showing the results of their travels. In addition to the eclipse, they visited John Briggs and his “telescope museum” and the VLA.

There is another eclipse coming up, in April, the last total solar eclipse in the continental U.S. for over 20 years. Hopefully, by watching the beauty of the annular solar eclipse, it might just the impetus to think about traveling for the next event.