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Item MM 30308 Glass Negative - Visitors Inspecting Huts, Solar Eclipse Expedition, Goondiwindi, Queensland, Sep 1922

Summary

Visitors inspecting the huts and equipment during the Solar Eclipse Expedition, Goondiwindi, Queensland, Sep 1922. The hut of Dr Joseph Baldwin, Victorian Government Astronomer, is on the left.

In 1922, Joseph Baldwin led a Melbourne Observatory solar eclipse expedition to Goondiwindi, Queensland, joining with another group from Sydney Observatory.

The purpose of the expedition was to test Einstein's general theory of relativity. Einstein's theory predicted that the light travelling to us from stars should bend as it passed the Sun, due to the curvature in space-time created by the massive object. A solar eclipse expedition in 1919 had found such a bending of the light, but in 1922 it was still important to undertake confirming observations. The Goondiwindi expedition was not very successful, as they were unable to take sufficiently precise photographs to test the theory.

The US Lick Observatory's group at Wallal, Western Australia, succeeded in making observations that confirmed Einstein's theory.