Isaac Asimov was the prolific writer's prolific writer. He wrote a lot and a lot of it was scattered through many areas of non-fiction -- he has a book in every major category of the Dewey Decimal system. Nightfall was written in 1941 and from Wikipedia "He wrote many short stories, among them "Nightfall", which in 1964 was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America the best short science fiction story of all time."
This story was his 31st published.
A slight error early in the story. Asimov makes the logical assumption that if people are uncertain about the future, ala the Y2K of a decade ago, and Harold Camping of 2011, and Mayan Calendar ending of 2012, that business will sour and investors will get shy. It's logical... but the reality seems to be there is enough emotional mania in these events that in aggregate investors and consumers get more excited than cautious. Investors will actually embrace more risk. The Great Recession housing bubble and related financial risk-taking is an example of Anti-Terrorist mania taking over the US economy in the 2000's.
Again, it is fascinating how the usage of many words has changed in the last sixty years. The terms used in familiar usage have changed a lot.
The story structure is classic: a reporter is viewpoint character, he is opposed to some stuffy professor types who are on a serious mission, and one of those profs is a somewhat outsider and he is the one who explains things to the reporter.
A thought: If a world is bathed in light all day, would light bulbs be invented? There might be some demand for torches in mines, but where else would artificial illumination be needed? A world like this could develop steam power for the same reasons ours did, and electricity could be developed to power engines. But torches, candles, lanterns, gas lights, and light bulbs... who would see a need for those? For that matter, how often would it occur to people that fire is a source of light as well as heat? Especially fearful, panicked people?
The need for lighting would only come as these people started building big buildings, but, even then, it would be easy to default into designs that didn't require lighting -- think Greek and Roman temples. Buildings requiring lighting would evolve only late in these people's Industrial Age.
In the same vein, would these people ever develop the camera obscura -- the artistic device used by the Dutch realist artists to make their painting so graphic? This first consisted of drawing inside a darkened room with a pin hole in one side.
The above, of course, does not take into considerations the differences it would make in evolution in general. For instance, would there be burrowing animals on this world? If so, they would be an example of dealing with dark these people are familiar with?
Another thought: Tides. These would be complex due to orbiting so many stars, but ultimately figured out as due to gravity. When they were, tidal motions should reveal the moon as well, confirming the orbital perturbations Asimov mentions.
Asimov has a nice discussion of how the holy book -- The Book of Revelations -- could survive the madness cycles.
Nice touch. Once the eclipse begins the contemporary Cultists are calling for the destruction of the observatory -- classic Shoot the Messenger. That is consistent with instinct and mania.
I'm midway through the story and it's gotten a little disquieting. What I can figure out is the technology level (other than astronomy) and sociology level these people have reached. It's not clear if they have cars, for instance, although there is a passing reference to traveling in a refrigerated train car. And the scientists talk about absolute zero and perfect gas laws.
Their speech and concepts sound like liberal democracy speech and concepts, but that's not quite clear. They have photography, and they have astronomers (this serious group of professors). They have newspapers (the reporter) and they have controversy in the newspapers (not government controlled totalitarians). But they don't seem to have telephones or telegraphs (they aren't in direct communication contact with the Hideout).
This thought comes out because Asimov has a couple of the characters discussing astronomy and universe size as they are waiting for the eclipse to move to totality. The discussion doesn't sound fully believable to me. Another thought: these scientists don't seem to have thought of looking at the sky in other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. If they did, they would see the stars before the eclipse -- daylight haze is distinct to the visible spectrum and higher frequencies. And for that same reason, they don't seem to have high-flying planes or rockets equipped with cameras.
The ending -- stressing how many stars are visible -- is a cop-out. Why should it matter to people who have never seen stars whether there are ten or ten thousand to see? Any number would be equally amazing. And, a final thought: How were these scientists planning on storing these undeveloped negatives they were creating? How were they planning on getting their work back to the Hideout?
So, all-in-all, real good technofiction. But it did have some holes.