26
spectrum with height. In 1895 and 1896 Knut Ångström measured how the
solar constant varied with height (Alta Vista, Las Cañadas, Puerto de la Cruz,
and Güímar).
The year 1910 marked the return of Halley’s Comet, and many came to the
mountaintops of Tenerife to observe it. Among them was Jean M. Mascart of
the Paris Observatory, who formed part of a well-organized expedition with
medical doctors and physiologists interested in studying the damage that any
poisonous gases from the comet’s tail might produce as it swept past the Earth.
How strange it must have been to see doctors and astronomers keeping a close
watch on Halley’s Comet. They set up their observatory in Cañada de la
Grieta under the ramparts of the circular walls of Las Cañadas, using the
hunting lodge that the Kaiser used on his African safaris, now earmarked for
scientific use—the very same Kaiser’s Lodge, in which my wife and I spent our
first night on our Canarian adventure (see Chap. 1) at Izaña Meteorological
Observatory.
While the medical researchers sunbathed, using themselves as guinea pigs
to determine the effects of height and solar radiation on the human body,
Fig. 3.2 Piazzi Smyth’s makeshift observatory at Altavista (now hosting a mountain
refuge of that name), just below the peak of Mount Teide. (Credit: ROE/RSE Archives)
F. Sánchez
spectrum with height. In 1895 and 1896 Knut Ångström measured how the
solar constant varied with height (Alta Vista, Las Cañadas, Puerto de la Cruz,
and Güímar).
The year 1910 marked the return of Halley’s Comet, and many came to the
mountaintops of Tenerife to observe it. Among them was Jean M. Mascart of
the Paris Observatory, who formed part of a well-organized expedition with
medical doctors and physiologists interested in studying the damage that any
poisonous gases from the comet’s tail might produce as it swept past the Earth.
How strange it must have been to see doctors and astronomers keeping a close
watch on Halley’s Comet. They set up their observatory in Cañada de la
Grieta under the ramparts of the circular walls of Las Cañadas, using the
hunting lodge that the Kaiser used on his African safaris, now earmarked for
scientific use—the very same Kaiser’s Lodge, in which my wife and I spent our
first night on our Canarian adventure (see Chap. 1) at Izaña Meteorological
Observatory.
While the medical researchers sunbathed, using themselves as guinea pigs
to determine the effects of height and solar radiation on the human body,
Fig. 3.2 Piazzi Smyth’s makeshift observatory at Altavista (now hosting a mountain
refuge of that name), just below the peak of Mount Teide. (Credit: ROE/RSE Archives)
F. Sánchez