Overview

⏱️Schedule:  Doors 18:30 → Talk 19:00→ Q&A → Mingle
🌐Language: English

In the 19th century, solar eclipses turned astronomy into an adventure sport. Telescopes, cameras and chemicals were packed onto ships and trains; scientists travelled for weeks to stand in a narrow “path of totality” where, for just a few minutes, the Sun would disappear and a whole new sky would appear. A lot depended on those precious minutes not being cloudy.

These expeditions have often been told as stories of “great men” and their discoveries. But look closer at the field notes, letters and travel diaries, and another picture appears: wives, daughters, amateur and observers who also travelled, observed and wrote – and whose contributions were central to how eclipse expeditions actually worked.

In this talk, a historian of science from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin takes us into the world of Victorian eclipse chasing from the perspective of the women who were there. Using archival material from real world expeditions, she shows how women helped plan journeys, set up instruments, record data and build communities around astronomy – often without formal job titles or institutional recognition.

Together, we’ll explore:

• Why chase eclipses at all?

  Why 19th-century astronomers were so obsessed with observing total solar eclipses, and what they hoped to learn in those brief moments of darkness.

• Life on an eclipse expedition

  What was practically involved in organising and joining these journeys: travel, logistics, instruments – and where women showed up in that work.

• Who were the women in the field?

  The wives, daughters, association members and amateurs who participated in expeditions, and the different roles they carved out for themselves.

• Shaping science from the margins

  How these women used expeditions to engage with – and sometimes quietly reshape – scientific practices, communities and ideas.

• Rethinking the history of astronomy

  What changes in our picture of 19th-century astronomy when we include women and gender as central to the story, rather than a footnote.

Expect an evening that feels more like story-driven documentary than technical astronomy lecture: Victorian travel, tents and telescopes, nervous glances at the clouds, and the “eclipsed” people who made big science possible. You’ll leave with a richer sense of who actually does science, and how easily crucial contributors can disappear from the official record.

Speaker

Megan Rhian Briers

Historian of science, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Megan Rhian Briers is a doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and a member of the International Max Planck Research School “Knowledge and Its Resources”. Her project, Women in Nineteenth-Century British and American Astronomical Fieldwork, examines how women contributed to astronomical expeditions and observing campaigns, especially solar eclipse expeditions. 

Location