Jay Pasachoff Obituary, Jay Pasachoff, Who Pursued Eclipses Across the Globe, Dies at 79

Jay Pasachoff Obituary, Death – On Sunday, November 20, Jay Pasachoff, a solar astronomer who saw 74 solar eclipses in his lifetime, passed away in his Williamstown, Massachusetts, home. Age-wise, he was 79. At Williams College, Pasachoff served as the Hopkins Observatory’s director and the Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy. He was well known for both his accurate weather forecasts and his extensive understanding of eclipses. Pasachoff had an amazing record of selecting the finest eclipse viewing locations based on the likelihood that they would have clear skies during totality by scouring the available data, such as weather almanacs.
His mother was a teacher when Pasachoff was born in Manhattan on July 1, 1943, and his father was a surgeon who later served in the Army Medical Corps during World War II.

Early on, Pasachoff became interested in astronomy. Following his relocation to the Bronx, Pasachoff frequented the Hayden Planetarium. And when he was a senior in high school, he started experimenting with making telescopes. Then, at the age of 16, Pasachoff enrolled in a first-year astronomy course at Harvard taught by solar eclipse authority Donald Menzel. A few weeks later, Menzel was able to get access to a plane to allow his students to see totality from the air, and Pasachoff saw his first total solar eclipse.

Pasachoff graduated from Harvard with his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate in astronomy within ten years. And throughout the course of the following 50 years, he made every effort to see more than 70 solar eclipses. Pasachoff was more than just an eclipse enthusiast. He was a gifted scholar who focused on the fragile corona, the Sun’s outermost layer. Despite the corona being incredibly heated, it is difficult to observe because of how brilliant the Sun’s disk is. Solar eclipses, on the other hand, present a fantastic opportunity to study the solar corona without the need for pricey satellite investigations. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon perfectly blocks the Sun.

However, Pasachoff was arguably most known for his heroic outreach initiatives, which he used to inspire people of all skill levels to look for the amazing celestial vistas the sky has to offer. He realized that the amazing wonders and secrets that Mother Nature has to offer could serve as an inspiration for the future generation of scientists.

Jay Pasachoff Obituary, Death – On Sunday, November 20, Jay Pasachoff, a solar astronomer who saw 74 solar eclipses in his lifetime, passed away in his Williamstown, Massachusetts, home. Age-wise, he was 79. At Williams College, Pasachoff served as the Hopkins Observatory’s director and the Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy. He was well known for…