University Plans to Construct World's Highest Observatory

The University is going to erect the world's highest astronomical observatory this summer at Fremont Pass, Colorado, it was announced yesterday.

The station will be equipped with a coronagraph, a new instrument for creating artificial solar eclipses and making possible regular observations of the corona, mysterious halo surrounding the sun, and also of other phenomena of the sun's atmosphere. This instrument is the only one of its kind in the Western Hemisphere.

Day by Day Studies

Day-to-day studies of the solar corona will have an immediate practical importance for the forecasting of such widespread electrical storms as that which crippled the world's communication services on Easter Sunday, according to Donald B. Menzel, professor of Astrophysics.

Located at an altitude of 11,318 feet in the Colorado Rockies, the observatory will afford the most ideal conditions for the coronagraph, which requires clear atmosphere, free from dust and other particles. Professor Menzel will act as director.

He explained that the Harvard coronagraph, which has been under construction for three years, in a special type of telescope in which an eclipse of the sun is artificially created by means of appropriate screens to mask out the bright solar image.

Although the instrument provides excellent records and permits observers to work regardless of natural eclipses, it is not adapted as yet to replace observations of the natural eclipse altogether.

Other equipment at the station will include a powerful spectrograph to observe the spectrum of the corona. Color filters as well as movies will be used to record how the corona changes from day to day and how its streamers project into space.

Although the origin of the light in the corona is unknown, Professor Menzel said that there is a direct relation between great upheavals in the sun's corona and the occurrence of magnetic storms on earth.