Glen Vienneau
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Aug 07/00) - Members of a solar eclipse team from the U.S. had their eyes on Northern skies last week.

Professors Lori Crane and Dr. Jon Saken of the Palm Beach Community College in Florida documented on video the partial solar eclipse on July 30, beginning at 8:45 p.m.

They were part of the Solar Eclipse Expedition Team III which travels the world to do research on the moon and sun. This trip brought them to the NWT capital.

The program is funded by the college supporting Physics and Astronomy Club. Also part of the team were club members and Florida college students Sherline Herold, 22, and Ryan Johnson, 24.

"It's a great place to be; it's well situated for the eclipse," said Crane.

Not only did the sun's path in the skies allow for ideal visual observation, but the capital also offered good working conditions.

"The closer you are to the centre of action, the more of the sun you see covered. It was one of the reasons to come all the way up here," said Saken.

"This was a lot more pleasant than most of the places we've been at so far," he added.

He recalled the first expedition in 1998 in Curacao, an island in the Caribbean, where volcanic ash covered much of their equipment. Their second expedition was in Hungary last year.

"One of the nice things here is that we're not roasting in the sun," said Crane.

Although clouds blocked the view of the event for 45 minutes, the team was pleased with the results of the other half of the event.

"As soon as the break came we were ready, we were there. We got what we needed," said Saken.

For Johnson, who majors in computers, tracking the sun made for tense moments before shooting the video.

That situation was made worse by a defective tracking device in the telescope -- Johnson had to manually track the sun's path for the entire event, he said. Another consideration for Johnson was to capture the event for a video feed on the Internet. The event was broadcast for two educational conferences at the University of Guelph in Ontario.

"They were watching (it) live on the Internet, which was kind of exiting," said Crane.

The project was done by the team partly to refine their observing techniques for observing total eclipses in the future.

Dr. Saken also hoped to gather more information to study densities of the sun's corona (outer layer) with the use of polarized lenses. In addition, he gathered data as part of a study on long-term changes on the sun's visible radius, which is believed to be stable.

"Even a small change in the sun can have a big effect on our weather. It is something we like to keep track of," he said.

The project, which started three years ago, is also to stimulate interest in students about astronomy.