Fred Espenak Biography

Fred Espenak is a retired NASA astrophysicist from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where he worked with infrared spectrometers to probe the atmospheres of planets. He is also known as “Mr. Eclipse” because of his work on predicting and observing solar eclipses. He has written more than a dozen books on eclipses, including his most recent, “Eclipse Bulletin: Total Solar Eclipse of 2017 August 21.” Espenak also runs three websites on eclipse  predictions (www.EclipseWise.com), eclipse photography (www.MrEclipse.com), and astrophotography (www.AstroPixels.com). Over the past 50 years, he has witnessed 29 total eclipses of the Sun. In 2003, the International Astronomical Union honored Espenak by naming asteroid 14120 after him. Espenak now lives in Portal, Arizona, where he operates his Bifrost Astronomical Observatory.

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