SYRACUSE, N.Y. (WSYR) – Over the years, solar eclipses have led to some important scientific discoveries.
Back in ancient times, observers of both solar and lunar eclipses used them to determine the size of the moon and sun as well as the fact that the Earth was round.
During a lunar eclipse, the Earth moves between the sun and the moon, and our planet’s round – not flat – shadow is projected onto the surface of the moon.
By observing the corona surrounding the sun and measuring the makeup of the light, French astronomer Pierre Janssen was able to discover the element Helium. The name he gave the new found element even comes from the Greek word for sun which is “Helios.”
Also, famed physicist Albert Einstein figures into solar eclipse scientific discoveries. You see, back in the 1800s astronomers noticed a slight wobble in the orbit of the closest planet to the sun, Mercury. Thinking it might be the gravitational tug of an undiscovered planet even closer to the sun, they scoured the skies during solar eclipses but the mysterious planet did not show.
Enter Einstein.
His Theory of Relativity, or E = mc2, put a new twist on how planets behaved in their orbits. It was what’s called the “curvature of spacetime” caused by the mass of the sun that led to Mercury’s wobble. It was confirmed during a 1919 total solar eclipse.