Research Division Seminar
Airborne Astronomy: Chasing the trail of John Beckman

Abstract

At the beginning of the XX century, pilots and scientists realized that the detection of certain cosmic events like eclipses were better obtained by installing observatories on top of aircraft. This story starts with a 30-year old John Beckman, now professor at the IAC  and then airborne astronomer pioneer, chasing the Sun over west africa on the wings of a French supersonic airplane. Controlling a Michelson interferometer with one hand and filling with liquid helium at 17.000 m from the ground while flying at 2000 km/h, John broke both the barried of sound and the Guiness record of the longest eclipse ever observed. The legacy of that one in a lifetime mission made ESA and NASA start the astronaut selection program for the Space Shuttle and set the bases of the SOFIA airborne observatory, a mission that made our team able to detect the shape of the magnetic fields in external galaxies.