During the bicentennial celebrations in 1976, Boston bustled with fireworks, concerts, and historical reenactments, while a unique spectacle quietly unfolded at the Old North Church. The iconic lanterns, forever linked to Paul Revere’s midnight ride, were illuminated not by candlelight, but by the distant light of a star some 200 light-years away. This episode explores the technological challenges involved in capturing starlight and converting it into an electrical signal that traveled thousands of miles, as well as the promotional challenges for Hawaiian officials who wanted to feel like part of the bicentennial celebration. Buckle up, as we journey from the volcanic peak of Mauna Kea to the heart of revolutionary Boston, all under the ethereal glow of a distant star.
Tag: Astronomy
Eclipse Fever (episode 298)
Eclipses happen when the moon passes between the sun and the earth during the daytime, briefly blocking the light of the sun from the face of the earth. Over the past few years, observers in the US have been treated to every flavor of solar eclipse: a partial in 2021 when part of the sun’s disc remains unobscured; a total eclipse in 2017, when viewers in the narrow path of totality experienced daytime darkness, and an annular eclipse just last fall, when a ring of fire hung in the cold, bright sky. In honor of the April 2024 total eclipse, I’m sharing a clip that cohost emerita Nikki and I recorded within the first year of this podcast about some of the earliest experiences of eclipses here in Boston, most notably in 1780 and 1806. I’ll also share a clip about an unrelated phenomenon that darkened the skies over Boston for a second time in 1780, then again in 1881, 1950, and several times in the past 5 years. This was no eclipse however, but rather a much more terrestrial effect.
The Mather Borealis (episode 289)
Was Cotton Mather a victim of 18th century cancel culture? In December 1719, Bostonians were astounded at the spectacle of the northern lights dancing in the sky, a sight that nobody alive could remember seeing before. One of the Bostonians who watched in astonishment was Cotton Mather. Confronted with this unprecedented natural phenomenon, Mather was torn. His instinct was to see signs and portents in the aurora borealis, but the world around him was changing, and his fellow natural philosophers were more likely to see the clockwork rules of Newtonian physics than the hand of God or the devil moving the universe around them. Mather’s report focuses on the secular experience of the phenomenon, but had he really changed his tune, or was he following the new political correctness of the modern era?
A Blizzard of Falling Stars (episode 287)
190 years ago, Bostonians awoke to an unexpected light in the sky before dawn on November 13, 1833. Some began their morning routines, thinking the sun had risen, a few dashed outside to douse the fire they expected to see consuming a neighbor’s house, and some simply looked out the window in curiosity. When they looked up to the heavens, they saw an unparalleled celestial spectacle. A meteor shower of unprecedented intensity erupted in the night sky, filling it with tens of thousands of shooting stars per hour, which observers said fell as thickly as snowflakes in a winter storm. Star Wars fans might picture the Eye of Aldhani from episode 6 of Andor, a spectacular feat of special effects that allowed the protagonists to make their escape from the empire during a meteor shower that lit up the sky. The real 1833 meteor shower was no less spectacular. The event, which came to be known as the Leonid meteor storm, was one of the most remarkable astronomical events in recorded history, both because of its breathtaking beauty and its importance to the development of science.
Boston’s Dark Days and Eclipses (episode 145)
The brilliant sunsets and dramatic weather reports inspired by smoke drifting into our area from Canadian wildfires last month got me thinking about two past HUB History shows. There have been at least three smoke events in Boston history that caused darkness in the middle of the day and made people wonder if the end of the world was coming. Our first clip will be about the dark days in 1780, 1881, and in 1950. Of course, people who witnessed dark days compared them to solar eclipses. Our second classic segment is from the summer of 2017, exploring the solar eclipses that early Boston witnessed, from soon after European colonization to the turn of the 19th century.
Continue reading Boston’s Dark Days and Eclipses (episode 145)
Episode 42: Total Eclipse of the Podcast
Your humble hosts are traveling this week, trying to see the first total eclipse of our lifetimes. While we’re gone, listen to the story of the 1806 eclipse, the first total eclipse seen in Boston after European colonization.