Contemporary documents from the Concorde 1973 Eclipse Project.
Click on the above to see a larger version of the diagram.
This page provides links to scans of some old printed documents which relate to the use of Concorde 001 in 1973 to observe a total Solar Eclipse. The image above shows a diagram of the optics of the QMC experimental system that was used to observe the Eclipse. This diagram was drawn by Derek Vickers who was the main mechanical technician of the QMC ‘Astro Group’ in the 1970s. It was used to help explain the system to vistors and at meetings. Click on the above image if you wish to see a larger version of the diagram.
6th March 1973 – Notes on Experimenter’s Meeting in Tolouse
This set of notes summarises what was discussed, etc, at a meeting where all the project scientists were present to co-ordinate progress towards the observational flight. It now provides a useful summary/overview of the experiments and the state of progress at the time of the meeting.
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Test Flight Plan
28th March 1973 – Anticipated Schedule for Personnel
This was a provisional plan for where each person involved with the experiments would be as the work progressed. In practice this kept changing as events unfolded so the details shown aren't entirely accurate.
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6th May 1973 - Open Day at Tolouse
During the period when development work was in progress the Tolouse facility had an open day. The publicity material included a map of the site and its location, plus some information on Concorde and the A300b.
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insert-a330b
insert-Concorde
Map Inside
Map Rear
28th May 1973 Operations Schedule
This lists a timetable for the planned operations issued at the end of May 1973.
Operations Timetable (in French)
23rd June 1973 – Test Flight
These pages show a map of the flight plan for the test flight of 23rd June, and the progress announcements the flight crew would make to keep experimenters informed.
Course Map
Schedule pt1
Schedule pt2
These show a “checklist” that John Beckman wrote as a reminder for use during the test flight. (N.B. A.C.M was Tony Marston, the mechanical technician who was a part of the team.)
Checklist Page1
Checklist Page2
These show scans of a notebook I used for the test flight. It combines a checklist and data I'd need that were written pre-flight with some notes I made during the test flight. (The notes added in flight are in red biro.)
Cover
Inner
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Pages 2 and 3 aligned
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The Ross-Concorde Handbook
John Ross was John Beckman’s other research student at the time. I wrote a set of pages as a guide for him - and for John Beckman - that they could use to help them switch on and use the electronics in a situation where I might not be present. Neither of them knew much about the system's electronics. Writing this was useful because as it turned out I wasn‘t eventually given a place on Concorde 001 for the actual eclipse flight! Maybe I should have accidentally forgotten to write the guide!...
I wrote the document quickly, and now only have a faded photocopy onto which I'd added some sketches to show some of the circuit arrangements to someone else. Hence this is, sadly, a poor-quality copy of the original, informal set of instructions.
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Eclipse Solaire by Peter Reader
Peter Reader was a technican who worked for RSRS (Radio and Space Research Station). He has been assigned to help build the QMC system. In particular his task was to incorporate QMC's Far-Infrared optics and systems into Concorde. This then linked to my task as a new QMC research student to design, build and test the control and data-collecting electronics that captured the spectra the QMC interferometer would collect for later analysis. Tony Marston (QMC technician) designed and built the optics and mechanical parts of the interferometer. The data analysis after the flight was carried out by Dr Beckman and John Ross, who was another of Dr Beckman's research students
The scans are from an amusing and satirical article Peter wrote for a staff magazine at RSRS which was at the time in Slough, southern England, but was to be incorperated into another larger UK research laboratory at a later date. (Hence the joke reference to Culham where this considerably larger lab still exists.) The pages I have start with ‘page 3’. I never saw a ‘page1’ or ‘page2’ but Peter said these were about a totally different project.
His comments omits some details. The Colonel was the person in charge of the airport, and this was, of course, a time when Spain was run by Franco. The airport was under military control. When the guards rushed towards us they were pointing their guns at us, making plain that they were minded to shoot us! Very angry that we'd dared to more the Colonel’s car. However we pointed out that if the liquid Helium dewar was moved into the Sun or shot it might explode! And if not, the Helium would boil away and our experiment would not be able to operate. That would mean that they had sabotaged an important international project! So they graciously allowed the dewer to remain in the shade. It was an interesting few moments. My first trip out of the UK looked for a moment like also being my last!
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6th June 1975 – Letter to Nature
The results of the QMC experiment were eventally published in Nature as a letter. Unfortunately, two snags had limited the data collection. One of these was, erm, operator error. I wasn't able to fly on the Eclipse flight because it had decided that as a mere fresh research student the seats on the plane were to be given to ‘more important’ people. The system was therefore operated by John Beckman. He initially set the interferometer to run at a speed that would do one interferogram scan per second. Alas this was too fast for the detector’s response time, so the result was little or no real data. Later in the flight the scan speed was reduced to perform a scan every ten seconds, and this did collect data.
The second error was that the moving mirror was operated via a cam-and-follower arrangement designed and built by Tony Marston, a technican in the QMC Astronomy group. Unfortunately he'd made a mistake when making this mechanical arrangement. As a result the scans were non-linear. At the time the ability to process data was far more primitive than now. Hence this error would have made it impractical to get fully detailed spectra. Fortunately, it was still possible to get useful results by simpler analysis. This was then used for the report in Nature.
Another additional problem - as mentioned in the letter - was that no analogue filters had been made to cope with 10-second scan rate output. These days, of course, analysis would employ powerful digital methods that would be able to gain more information. But digital methods were relatively basic back in 1973, so analogue filters had been chosen and made for the task.
I still have the Eclipse Flight data tape and recently made an LPCM digital transfer of the recordings to ensure that the content is preserved. Thus in principle, now it could be analysed using modern methods.
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This graph was drawn by John Beckman but was omitted from what appeared in Nature.
Omitted Graph
The Data collected during the Eclipse flight was recorded onto tape. Recently this data has been transcribed into the form of a digital file which is now openly available. You can find more details on this page:
Eclipse Data and how it was obtained.
