United States Naval Observatory
Immediately on leaving Samoa, Pollock was appointed superintendent of the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., replacing outgoing Rear Admiral William D. MacDougal.
On August 22, 1924, Mars came within 34,630,000 miles (55,730,000 km) of Earth. The US Naval Observatory made no formal observations of the planet, but Pollock and the son of astronomer Asaph Hall ceremonially re-enacted Hall's 1877 discoveries of the moons Phobos and Deimos with his original 17-inch (430 mm) telescope. They also made observations to calculate the masses of the two moons.
On January 24, 1925, Pollock commanded the dirigible USS Los Angeles on a flight from Lakehurst, New Jersey, to photograph a solar eclipse from an altitude of 8,000 feet (2,400 m). This was the first time an eclipse had been photographed from the air.
Read more about this topic: Edwin Taylor Pollock
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