Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Jun 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007lyot.confe..17h&link_type=abstract
Proceedings of the conference In the Spirit of Bernard Lyot: The Direct Detection of Planets and Circumstellar Disks in the 21s
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Scientific paper
This opening session focuses on the remarkable contributions of the French astronomer Bernard Lyot (1897-1952) to high-contrast instrumentation and observing. The first speaker, a historian of solar physics, will recount Lyot's path to and development of the coronagraph during the interwar decades. The second, an astronomer who had the good fortune to begin with Lyot, will discuss his maître's instrumental innovations during and after World War II - a brilliant career that, alas, ended prematurely in Egypt shortly after the 1952 eclipse.
Four questions need addressing when considering Lyot's research on and with the coronagraph during 1929-1939. Why and how in 1929/30, despite having made an excellent start in planetary astrophysics, did Lyot decide to take up the recalcitrant problem of finding a way to observe the corona outside of eclipse? How, after having made his first observations of the corona in full daylight, did Lyot follow up on this promising start through the 1930s? How did he go about building an ever more robust case for the reliability of his instrument and its results? And why, notwithstanding contemporary admiration for Lyot's achievements, did but one astronomer outside Lyot's circle - Max Waldmeier of Zurich - take up coronagraphic research during the 1930s?
The answers to these questions shed interesting light on Lyot's pioneering research. They also raise more general issues that may well have come up in the careers of many attending this conference - e.g., the considerations that lead a scientist to embark on a quite novel line of inquiry; the factors that influence how s/he follows up on a promising beginning; and the strategies that s/he might use to convert putative findings into accepted results.
Turning to 1939-1952, Audouin Dollfus will greatly enlarge our appreciation for Lyot's versatility by describing four distinct endeavors - his development of the phase contrast method; his design of the monochromatic birefringent filter and use for studying chromospheric and coronal phenomena; his coronameter method to detect the solar corona without a coronograph; and his high resolution telescope for planetary observations installed at Pic du Midi. Lyot's unrelenting drive to improve astronomical instrumentation serves still today as a model for the innovations that make this conference possible.
Dollfus Audouin
Hufbauer Karl
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