Astronomy

Bible story of a super-strong Israelite hero
brought low by the treacherous Dalila.
Samson’s first act begins with Samson
blinded and in chains, a prisoner of the
hated Philistines. He bemoans his fate in
an aria that uses the image of a total solar
eclipse to symbolize his loss of sight.
Samson premiered in February 1743 at
London’s Covent Garden Theatre, and it
was a smash hit.
Why a solar eclipse as a metaphor for
blindness? Did Handel witness the total
eclipse of 1715? It’s more likely than not
that he did. After all, he lived near or in
London from 1713 onward. He could have
easily made the journey to see both the
1715 and 1724 eclipses. Bot h were w it-
nessed by thousands of people, and their
memories of the events would have been
vivid when Samson and its dramatic aria,
“Total Eclipse,” premiered in 1743. Talk
about a gripping opening, a dramatic hook!

Samson was a favorite of audiences

throughout Handel’s life, and it remains

popular to this day.

In his later years, “Total Eclipse” would

often bring the composer to tears as he sat

listening to the performance, but unable to

see it. For the last 10 years of his life,

Handel himself was blind, trapped in the

shadowy path of his own “total eclipse.”

Stars fell

Comets eject gas and dust as they approach

the Sun and their surfaces heat up. They

leave a meteoroid stream of dust particles

in their wake, with some areas denser

than others. The gravitational inf luence

of the planets — especially Jupiter — as

well as the pressure of sunlight perturb the

streams, so the orbits of the particle trails

are not quite the same as their comets of

origin. Meteor showers occur when Earth

moves through these clouds of cometary

dust. Older meteoroid trails are fairly

sparse and produce few meteors per hour,

while newer trails are denser and the mete-

or showers are more impressive. Outbursts

greater than 1,000 meteors per hour are

called meteor storms.

The Leonid meteor shower graces the

night sky every November. Named for the

constellation Leo, from which it appears to

radiate, the Leonids are famous for their

occasional spectacular outbursts. The

Leonid meteor storm of November 1833

was truly epic. For nine hours on the night

of Thursday, November 12, people across

eastern North America saw thousands of

meteors streaking through the sky each

minute. Observers later estimated the

number of meteors from 100,000 to nearly

240,000 per hour. Newspapers and maga-

zines around the country ran stories about

the event, complete with illustrations based

on observers’ reports.

Left: Edmond Halley’s map of the predicted path of the 1715

eclipse visible over England was printed and sold as a broadside

(a type of advertisement or poster). Its widespread availability

and affordable price created excitement and encouraged people

to view the event; one of them may have been Handel. UNIVERSITY OF

CAMBRIDGE, INSTITUTE OF ASTRONOMY LIBRARY

Below: Handel’s Samson included an eclipse-inspired piece,

aptly named “Total Eclipse.” The oratorio premiered in 1743

to great success and remained hugely popular. This playbill

advertises a performance in San Francisco in 1863.

MARGARET BLAKE ALVERSON: SIXT Y YEARS OF CALIFORNIA SONG, 1913