Do you remember or have read about the total solar eclipse of Feb 16, 1980? The path of totality passed over India making it the first total solar eclipse of the century to be observed from India. In independent India, scientists, teachers and students from various research and educational institutions, universities and schools for the first time ever went about in large numbers to study so extensively the greatest spectacle nature offers the mankind with whatever equipments they could procure or make. While it is the corona of the Sun that is the most important entity of interest to the solar astronomer, visible for a very short duration of the totality, the impact of the event is not limited to the world of science alone. It is far reaching and multidimensional. The awareness a natural phenomenon and its scientific study generates is phenomenal. In that sense the Feb 16, 1980 eclipse was a great awakener post Independence that created an unprecedented excitement among persons from all walks of life. The path of totality fell over places in India such as Hubli, Raichur, Nalgonda and Konark etc.
The Indian Institute of Astrophysics established camps for observations at Hosur near Hubli and at Jawalgera near Raichur, in Karnataka. A distinct feature at the Jawalgera Camp was a massive all steel 68 feet tower which housed specific experimental installations. An optical system consisting of a coelostat and a lens placed atop the tower was to send the image of the eclipsed Sun to its bottom, converted into a basement laboratory with thatched walls. Here the IIA astronomers had installed a flash spectrograph in order to analyze the chromospheric and coronal radiation. All in all, there were seven experiments to be conducted. Camping with IIA were Czech and Yugoslav teams that set up experiments of their own. The Czechs had brought their equipment from Czechoslovakia in a caravan of cars and trucks via Iran and Pakistan in 25 days.
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