We describe the history of solar-eclipse supervision since the formation of the International Astronomical Union, as the supervising body morphed from a full commission to a subcommission to its current status as an Inter-Divisional Working Group of the Education, Outreach and Heritage Division and the Sun and Heliosphere Division.

I discuss the burgeoning World Wide Web and how it can be used to aid astronomy teaching.

I supply a list of a variety of useful Web sites.

The World Wide Web was invented 5 years ago at CERN, which is now translated as the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, as a way of aiding access to information from remote sites. The invention of graphic interfaces, notably Mosaic by a group at the National Supercomputer Center in Illinois and then Netscape Navigator as a private development by many of the original Mosaic people, led to an explosion in use of the Web. Millions of people around the world are now able to access information from over 100,000 Web sites.

There is much astronomical information on the Web, though that information make up only a small fraction of all the information available through this medium.

We confirm that deuterium exists in the Galactic Center (GC) and estimate that D/H = 3 × 10−6 using a new 5192-chemical reaction model. This is the lowest D/H ratio observed in the Galaxy, five times lower than the local ISM D/H = 1.5 × 10−5 but 106 × larger than D/H predicted by GC models. We detected DCN in the GC Sgr A 50 km/s molecular cloud located 10 pc from the GC with the NRAO 12m telescope and obtained T * R = 0.061 ± 0.007 K and 0.04 ± 0.02 K for the J = 1-0 and 2-1 lines. The most likely source of the GC D is continuous injection from the infall of primordial matter with D/H = 5 × 10−5 with the D/H determined by astration and mixing. Thus there are no significant Galactic sources of D and no recent quasar or AGN activity in the GC. This primordial D/H implies that the baryon density is less than the density necessary to close the Universe; most of the baryons are in dark matter; and there are fewer than four ν families.

Total solar eclipses will cross southern Africa on June 21, 2001, and on December 4, 2002. Most of Africa will see partial phases. The total phase of the 2001 eclipse will be visible from parts of Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Madagascar. The total phase of the 2002 eclipse will be visible from parts of Angola, Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Mozambique. Public education must be undertaken to tell the people how to look at the eclipse safely. We can take advantage of having the attention of the people and of news media to teach about not only eclipses but also the rest of astronomy. I am Chair of a “Public Education at Eclipses” subcommission of IAU Commission 46 on the Teaching of Astronomy, and we are able to advise educators and others about materials, procedures and information releases.

Over the last dozen years, I have written textbooks on a variety of levels, starting with books for university students, proceeding to work with Naomi Pasachoff on books on the junior-high level, and, most recently, working with her and with others on an elementary-school series. I can testify that, in the United States, at least, the world of college and university texts is as different from the world of “el-hi” (elementary-high) texts as night is from day.

We are now at both the maximum of the solar activity cycle and at the most populated part of the saros. I discuss the solar corona over the recent saros and its changes with the solar activity cycle. We consider the scientific value of eclipse studies and how they relate to other ongoing coronal studies on the sun and other stars.

The public interest in astronomy, so often cited in this Colloquium, is demonstrated by the many works of art over the centuries with astronomical content. We mounted an exhibition, named Urania Observed after the muse of astronomy, at the Clark Art Institute to coincide with IAU Colloquium #105 on the Teaching of Astronomy and with the Sesquicentennial of the Hopkins Observatory. We thank Wayne Hammond of the Chapin Library for his expert assistance with this exhibition.

Totality at the eclipse of 23 November 2003 will cross land only on Antarctica. Details of the path and contact information for safe observation are provided.

Transits of Mercury and Venus across the face of the Sun are rare. The 20th century had 15 transits of Mercury and the 21st century will have 14, the two most recent occurring on 15 November 1999 and 7 May 2003. We report on our observations and analysis of a black-drop effect at the 1999 and 2003 transits of Mercury seen in high spatial resolution optical imaging with NASA’s Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) spacecraft. We have separated the primary contributors to this effect, solar limb darkening and broadening due to the instrumental point spread function, for the 1999 event. The observations are important for understanding historical observations of transits of Venus, which in the 18th and 19th centuries were basic for the determination of the scale of the solar system. Our observations are in preparation for the 8 June 2004 transit of Venus, the first to occur since 1882. Only five transits of Venus have ever been seen – in 1639, 1761, 1769, 1874, and 1882. These events occur in pairs, whose members are separated by 8 years, with an interval between pairs of 105 or 122 years. Nobody alive has ever seen a transit of Venus.

I report on American textbooks for kindergarten through highschool grades. Middle school, up through approximate age 15, is the last time American students are required to take science, and I provide statistics on the narrowing of the funnel containing those taking physics. I describe some recent curriculum and standards projects, and I discuss the recent “less is more” trend. I conclude with comments on whether textbooks are necessary and useful and discuss possible content and style of an ideal textbook.

We are reducing a set of spectra covering the region from 3400 to 4330 Å that show both spatial and spectral structure in chromospheric emission lines from many elements and ions. The spectra were taken with the vacuum tower telescope at the Sacramento Peak Observatory with the spectrograph slit tangent to and touching the limb. Thus some height resolution in the chromosphere is present. Many of the lines show doubly-reversed emission, often asymmetric either for the whole line or for fine structure. The quality of the data is such as to improve our understanding of line blends. The spectral structure can be compared with the well-known structure in the H and K lines of Ca II and in the resonance lines of MgII in order to deduce a model for the lower chromosphere.