Chronocinematograph

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Chronocinematograph is an astronomical tool that combines a film camera, a precise clock, and a timing device to photograph solar eclipses with accurate timing. It was invented in 1927 by Polish scientist Tadeusz Banachiewicz to study total solar eclipses. He used it in Lapland (Sweden) that year, and later in the United States (1932) and in Greece, Japan, and Siberia (1936). The device made it easier to time the eclipse and measure how long totality lasts by taking very precisely timed photos, including of Baily’s beads—the light beads that appear along the moon’s edge during an eclipse, which are hard to capture because the sun is so bright.