Maps of Solar Eclipses from 1900 to 1904

Beginning this decade, you will find many fine eclipse maps by Fr. William F. Rigge, who wrote many articles for Popular Astronomy, a now defunct magazine for amateur astronomers that was published by Carleton College from 1983 to 1951. About 35 of Rigge’s eclipse maps are found on this and the two succeeding galleries of historical eclipse maps. Father Rigge was a professor of astronomy and physics at Creighton College in Omaha, Nebraska.

Rigge performed his own eclipse calculations and his maps are detailed records of many aspects of eclipses. Unlike many simpler eclipse maps of this era, Rigge mapped many eclipse features such as isochrons for the beginning and ending of eclipse and time of greatest eclipse, isomagnitudes for eclipse, and limit lines for the eclipse. An interesting eclipse feature that Rigge mapped are curves for tenths of eclipse magnitude at sunrise and sunset; I have not seen these curves drawn on any eclipse maps besides Rigge’s.

Despite the advanced characteristics and fine cartographic qualities of Rigge’s maps, they retain a curiously parochial quality: Rigge’s maps consistently span only the 48 coterminus United States. Even his map for the 1905 eclipse, with it’s path beginning near the U.S.-Canada international border, does not stray outside the national border.