In late 1978, one of my physics professors at Colby College, Dr. Warren Rosen, invited students to submit proposals to join him and his advisor and colleague, Dr. Howard Poss, of Temple University, on an expedition to gather data during the last total eclipse in North America in this century. The eclipse was to take place on February 26, 1979 and the path of totality would pass right through Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Drs. Poss and Rosen were working on data and models of the solar limb darkening function, seemingly anomolous behavior in the last few hundred kilometers of the Sun's photosphere. The goal of the expedition was to take solar data with a variety of new instruments Drs. Rosen and Poss had built and take photographs of the eclipse itself.

Another student, Christopher L. Smith, and I were awarded grants by the school of travel money and expenses. So off we went... Colby College is in the middle of Maine, more or less, and can be quite cold in the winter... I've seen it as low as -40°F (-40°C, 233 K)... so we thought we were prepared for Winnipeg.