A NEW OBSERVATORY, AND SOME MOUNT WILSON 

 OBSERVATIONS 



By C. G. ABBOT 

 Secretary, Smithsonian Institution 



Thirteen years ago the National Geographic Society sent me to find 

 a suitable place in the Old World to observe the variation of the sun. 

 For the sun had been proved to be a slightly variable star, and it was 

 thought its changes might be the main element in weather control. 

 After investigating sites on lonely desert mountains in Algeria and 

 Baluchistan, I fixed on Mount Brukkaros in South West Africa, 

 within a Hottentot reservation. With a grant from the National 

 Geographic Society, an outfit of special apparatus was assembled, and 

 a tunnel observatory and a dwelling house were constructed on the 

 western rim of that craterlike desolate mountain. 



For 5 years the sun was observed there on every possible day. But 

 though the sun nearly always shines on Mount Brukkaros and rain 

 hardly ever falls, we were disappointed to find that high winds carry 

 the fine sands of the desert high over the summit, making the atmos- 

 phere hazy and nonuniform, and involving too great a handicap in 

 measuring solar variation. 



Then A. F. Moore sought to select a better station than Mount 

 Brukkaros by measuring conditions on a number of African moun- 

 tains, beginning on the Cape Verde Islands and going the rounds till 

 he arrived at Mount St. Katherine near Mount Sinai, in Egypt. Here 

 after over a hundred days of preliminary trials, it was decided that 

 a favorable site had been found. The equipment from Mount Bruk- 

 karos was installed on Mount St. Katherine, and complete observa- 

 tions of solar radiation were made there from 1933 to 1937. The 

 station proved excellent from a meteorological point of view. 



However, with a European war gravely threatening, and because of 

 excessive cost of upkeep due to the inaccessibility of Mount St. 

 Katherine, and a depressing and persistent intestinal disorder which 

 attacked almost all members of the staff, it was found advisable to 

 abandon the station in December 1937. 



Hoping to put our observing of solar variation on a more easily 

 maintained basis, and to fill in good observations in the interval 

 December to February when both of our other stations, in California 

 and in Chile, usually lose many days, I decided to locate a new station 

 in southwestern New Mexico. This region seems to partake to a 



is 



