Astronomer Jay M. Pasachoff explains everything about eclipses in the next Golden Webinar.

What role does mathematics play in predicting eclipses, from the ancient saros observations to Halley's 1715 map and up to today's web-based zoom-and-click maps? 

How do theoretical predictions based on magnetic-field measurements, emission spectra of high ionization lines, and radio observations compare to the high-resolution images available today?

The solar corona's magnetic field shapes the beautiful streamers that become dramatically visible during an eclipses' totality. How do theoretical predictions based on magnetic-field measurements, emission spectra of high ionization lines, and radio observations compare to the high res images available today? 

Jay M. Pasachoff will answer this and more in the next Golden Webinar on December 12; a virtual talk hosted by the Institute of Astrophysics of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

"I will discuss my expeditions to recent solar eclipses, including total eclipses in the United States in 2017 and Chile in 2019, as well as the annular solar eclipse in India in 2019."

"I will also discuss the next total solar eclipses, including Chile and Argentina on December 14, 2020; near or on Antarctica on December 4, 2021; Western Australia on April 20, 2023; and Mexico/United States/Canada on April 28, 2024; as well as the October 14, 2023, annular eclipse for which the partial-eclipse coverage of the Sun's diameter from Virginia will be about 44%."

"I will emphasize current topics of research of current solar eclipses, and how they link with the Sun-Earth connection and our understanding of the coronas of trillions of other stars."

"I will discuss my expeditions to recent solar eclipses, including total eclipses in the United States in 2017 and Chile in 2019."- Jay M. Pasachoff, Golden Webinar in Astrophysics.

Jay M. Pasachoff, a veteran of 72 solar eclipses

Jay Pasachoff is Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Hopkins Observatory at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, and a Visiting Scientist at Carnegie Observatories. (Before his Williams College appointment, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech and what was then called the Hale Observatories—Mt. Wilson and Palomar, following his Harvard postdoc and degrees.) 

A veteran of 72 solar eclipses, he is Chair of the International Astronomical Union's Working Group on Solar Eclipses and a member of the American Astronomical Society's Solar Eclipse Task Force. 

His recent research includes studies of the solar corona dynamics studied from the ground at eclipses and from spacecraft and the corona's temperature and structure over the solar-activity cycle from images and spectra. 

He also studied Pluto's atmosphere by observing stellar occultations and participated in the occultation study of Arrokoth that led to the diversion of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft to image it on January 1, 2019, with the farthest-from-Earth photograph ever taken.

His current eclipse research is supported by the Solar-Terrestrial Program of the Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences Division of the U.S. National Science Foundation. NASA has supported his Pluto/Arrokoth research.

Pasachoff received the 2003 Education Prize of the American Astronomical Society, the 2012 Janssen Prize of the Société Astronomique de France, the 2015 Richtmyer Lecture Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers, and the 2019 Klumpke-Roberts Award from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

Learn more:

• Jay M. Pasachoff Golden Webinar
• http://solarcorona.com for Pasachoff’s books
• http://totalsolareclipse.org for Pasachoff’s eclipse expeditions
• http://eclipses.info for the International Astronomical Union’s Working Group on Solar Eclipses.
• Golden Webinar in Astrophysics Series