Eclipses
In this set, photographic plates containing observations of total and partial eclipses of the Sun and of the Moon, as well as images of the daily life associated to these phenomena were digitalized. To ease the access to the information, due to the narrow historical relationship, the images of the eclipse and of the daily life were kept within the same images group. Therefore, there are 323 images of eclipses and 38 images of the daily life.
The observations of the total eclipse of the Sun, observed on May 29, 1919, from the city of Sobral/CE, which confirmed one of the consequences of Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, are contained within this set. The images can also be found at the website: https://daed.on.br/sobral/
The images of the original plates are in negative (the chrome emulsion was only invented in 1936). The images in positive of the photographic plates are copies. One can clearly see the vignetting, an effect that makes the edges of the images darker in relation to the center, suggesting that the Steinheil telescope, used during the eclipses observed from the city of Passa Quatro, in 1912 and from the city of Sobral, in 1919, did not get correctly setup for this type of observation (large field).
Learn more about the solar and lunar eclipses: predictions until the year 2050. 3D visualization at the website: https://daed.on.br/astro
Note: The images of scanned plates have their names formed, initially, by three letters associated to a number to facilitate their location in the digital database and physical archive of the Observatório Nacional library.
