Lori Gandy
Residents on Bower Street were given a rare treat during the
recent solar eclipse – a street viewing party hosted by Simon
Hanmer, a retired geologist with a passion for astronomy.
Hanmer, a long-time resident of Old Ottawa East, has been an
astronomy buff since he was nine years old, living in East London
in the UK.
“I wrote to the Astronomer Royal in red crayon, with my mother looking over my shoulder, offering him I think it was a shilling of my pocket money and asking for some photographs of the sun, the stars and the planets. And I got this wonderful letter back from his executive assistant, returning my shilling and explaining that their telescope didn’t actually take pictures. It was a radio telescope. But the letter said there were all these books out there that would make excellent Christmas presents and birthday presents for a child my age,” Hanmer recalled.
And thus began a lifelong passion, which Hanmer willingly shares any chance he gets. About six weeks beforesolar eclipse day, he sent an email to his neighbours, inviting them to a solar eclipse viewing party in his driveway.
Around noon on the day, Hanmer set up his telescope to point to the sun. As he explained: “The telescope is in the sun so it has a shadow. So you look at the shadow and align the telescope until the shadow is minimized. Now you know you are actually looking at the sun.” Once set up, the telescope tracked the sun as the earth rotated.
Lifelong astronomer Simon Hanmer and his telescope turned the solar eclipse into a festive street party for neighbours young and old alike on Bower Street.
Photo by Lorne Abugov
The turnout was terrific; about 50 people showed up, including around 25 to 30 young people. The kids had been well prepared at school for eclipse viewing. They knew the drill: don’t look directly at the sun and wear viewing glasses. To ensure everyone’s safety, he handed out viewing glasses, certified by the American Astronomical Society.
Hanmer’s telescope provided a spectacular view of the eclipse. Some of the older kids were a bit too cool to get too excited – at first. “Once someone showed interest and uttered the first ‘wow’ they all wanted to see,” said Hanmer. “And then everyone was cueing at the telescope.” And there was more than just the eclipse to see: “With the telescope, people were able to see a few sun spots as well, not a lot of detail but enough to be a big thrill.”
A fellow astronomer at the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada fashioned for Hanmer a simple device attached to a tripod that projected a view of the eclipse. It consisted of a U-shaped contraption. On one end, there was a sheet of paper with a hole with a cheap plastic lens in it to focus. Closer to the ground (the other side of the U-shape), there was a piece of cardboard with a sheet of white paper on it. “You simply project the image of the sun onto that sheet of paper,” he explained. “And you keep moving the tripod as the sun moves.” This device was an easy, inexpensive project – about $15, not counting the tripod.
Hanmer also had on hand a flat-bottomed metal kitchen colander, which he held over the ground perpendicular to the rays of the sun. The light went through the bottom end and each one of the holes acted like a pin-hole camera. The crowd watched amazed as dozens of crescents appeared on the ground, images of the eclipse taking place. Everyone snapped photos of this spectacular eclipse view.
Some of the kids tried taking photos with cell phones through the telescope (taking a picture directly would result in the phone getting fried). But they found out that it’s tricky. “You have to line up the plane of the camera in the phone perfectly through the eyepiece,” explained Hanmer. The most important aspect of this event for Hanmer wasn’t the science. “It was the poetry. It was the being together in our community. People were talking to each other as much as they were talking about the eclipse.”
Hanmer’s tripod-mounted contraption was a simple and effective way of projecting the eclipse onto a mounted sheet of white paper. Photos Supplied
As Hanmer explained: “Eclipses are very special in the human psyche – the one celestial event that everybody can see. And when there’s someone explaining that these are the heavenly bodies moving, all of a sudden you realize you are looking at the three-dimensional clockwork of the universe. You’re actually seeing a body move. The moon itself is moving, the earth is rotating. And that’s when the universe suddenly becomes human.”
Seeing people – especially kids – getting excited about something as profound as a solar eclipse gave Hanmer a great deal of pleasure. “All these kids were there with their parents. This tells me they went home and over the dinner table, they talked more about it. And that’s great.”
On a final note, Hanmer said the idea wasn’t to turn these kids into astronomers. He wanted to show them that there’s lots of fascinating stuff going on in the world. “Want an interesting job where you spend your day looking at the sun or something equally interesting to you? Stay in school and work hard.”
Everyone was thrilled by what they’d experienced and thankful to have a neighbour like Hanmer who is so willing to share his knowledge. Hanmer received a precious thankyou card made by one of the little attendees, complete with detailed drawings of what they’d all seen that day. One of the neighbours, Marta Farsang, attended with her high school daughter and brought cookies to share. “They were delicious,” said Hanmer. “They went fast. I got in line for mine right away.”
When asked what the best part of the eclipse was for him, he replied as expected: “Sharing it with the street.”
