Flight of a Shadow

Never did a solar eclipse get as much attention as the one of last week. It could be seen--at least partially and weather permitting--by about one-third of the earth's population. Never was an eclipse so thoroughly observed.

At Minneapolis and St. Paul, near the start of the eclipse, the sun rose in a clear sky with a small bite of its bright disk already nibbled away by the moon. Early risers, on roofs or in parks, had a perfect view of totality, with all the weird effects that they had been reading about. But the scientists were taking no chances. One group, led by Dr. Donald Menzel, head of the Harvard College Observatory, took spectroscopic motion pictures from a high-flying Stratocruiser. A task force from the University of Chicago pictured the sun's glowing corona with a photoelectric scanning device more sensitive than any eye or photographic film.

As the shadow of the moon swept northeast into Canada, it ran into more unfavorable weather. On the path of totality, near Hudson Bay, clouds covered the earth. Scientists from New York's American Museum of Natural History had a good observation point in an American Airlines plane that flew above the low clouds and dodged the patchy high ones.

As the moon's shadow raced over Greenland, it was waylaid by Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Britain's Astronomer Royal and lord of Herstmonceux Castle, now the Royal Observatory. Sir Harold chased the shadow from Greenland to Iceland in an R.A.F. bomber, prolonging his view of totality by 22 seconds as he looked for daylight aurorae. He saw none.

Jet View. On swept the shadow at 3,000 m.p.h. The Shetland Islands were covered with storm clouds, but southern Britain was reasonably clear, and millions of Britons saw the partial eclipse. Most spectacular view of totality was from 21 Canberra jet bombers of the R.A.F., which flew so high (50,000 ft.) that the shadow looked like an oval black shape in the cloud deck far below.

Crossing Norway, Sweden and Finland, mostly covered with clouds, the shadow entered Russia, where more than 30 ground observatories, Russian and satellite, were waiting for it. Northern Russia was cloudy, but the weather improved in the south, and stations in the Caucasus had excellent observing. In Iran a U.S. expedition was clouded over, but Father Francis J. Heyden of Georgetown University made up for it partially by winning a $400 rug from Iranian astronomers. They had bet him that the eclipse would not happen at all.

Sacred Ponds. In India, which the shadow reached just before sundown, came a kind of climax. For hours before the eclipse, orthodox Hindus had fasted, lest the food in their stomachs be polluted before it could be digested. Pregnant women hid in dark closets. At the sacred ponds of Kurukshetra and Sanyahet, near Delhi, waited 500,000 pilgrims who believed that during a solar eclipse all the sacred rivers of the world would flow into the two ponds, and that to bathe in them at that time would purge the soul of all sins. Since both the ponds were nearly dry, the Indian government had drilled six wells and pumped them brim full.

To pious Hindus, a solar eclipse is caused by a demon named Rahu who is only a severed head. He hates the sun because it was instrumental in getting his body removed; so every now and then he tries to swallow the sun.

As the sun shrank in size and brilliance, the 500,000 pilgrims bathed and worried and prayed. This time, they feared, Rahu might swallow the sun for good. But as the sun grew bright again, the 500,000 bathers rejoiced. What had happened, of course, was that Rahu, being only a head, could not swallow the sun for keeps. It passed into his mouth and was obscured temporarily. Then it popped out of his severed gullet as brilliant as ever.

When the sun set in India, the flight of the shadow was over. Scientists throughout the world packed their instruments and prepared for the long process of evaluating their data.

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