Testing relativity from the 1919 eclipse - A question of bias

Abstract

One of the most famous measurements in the history of 20th-century astronomy was made over the course of several months in 1919. Teams of observers from the Greenwich and Cambridge observatories in the UK traveled to Brazil and western Africa to observe a total solar eclipse that took place on 29 May 1919. Their aim was to establish whether the paths of light rays were deflected in passing through the strong gravitational field of the Sun. Their observations were subsequently presented as establishing the soundness of general relativity; that is, the observations were more consistent with the predictions of the new gravitational theory developed by Albert Einstein than with the traditional Newtonian theory. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.