William Herschel (1738-1822) was the first astronomer to systematically look beyond the solar system into the depths of intergalactic space. His early sky survey formed the foundation of today’s NGC (New General Catalog) of deep sky objects.

Born into a musical family in Hanover, Germany, Herschel mastered the oboe and made his living as a professional musician. He played in the Hanoverian Guard during the Seven Year War, but abandoned his military career and fled to England.

Herschel was blessed with a winning personality, so he made many friends in England and secured a lifetime appointment as an organist in Bath. He continued to compose, and he was pretty good at it… you can listen to a sample of his work here.  Yet he was bored, and turned for challenge to astronomy, starting with the popular works of James Ferguson. Herschel was captivated by the mysterious “nebulae”, the distant “cloudy stars”. But he was frustrated by the crude aberration-ridden refractors of the day and was the first to build and use large aperture Newtonian reflectors to see deeper into space.

He built more than 400 telescopes. In his most ambitious attempt, he tried to make a 36” metal mirror using a cast of hardened horse dung. The cast leaked molten metal onto the floor of his workshop, causing flagstones to explode and ricochet off the ceiling. This episode aside, Herschel made some of the finest large-aperture telescopes in the world at that time and earned income by selling them to kings and wealthy individuals throughout Europe.

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A replica of the telescope with which William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus.

But Herschel was more than a mechanic. He became a supremely patient and skilled observer. His detailed knowledge of the stars enabled him to discover an unexpected celestial wanderer: the planet Uranus. This discovery, made with a 6” reflector, gained him fame and freedom: he was granted fellowship in the Royal Society and a rich stipend from King George III.

With his hand-made reflectors, and with the help of his sister and assistant Caroline, he was the first to discover that many nebulae were made of stars (these were the globular and tight open clusters). But he also concluded some nebulae (planetary nebulae, for example) were made of a “shining fluid” of unknown constitution, which remained unknown until the 19th century.

Herschel assumed we lived in a vast cluster of stars and set out to map it by counting stars in different directions. He correctly concluded we lived in a flat disk of stars… a galaxy. He made many more conjectures of astonishing accuracy. He believed the Orion Nebula was “the chaotic material of future suns”. And he believed the Andromeda “nebula” was an island of millions of stars. He had no way of proving these conjectures, yet he was correct.

Despite his wealth, fame, and accomplishments, Herschel never lost his love “for this magnificent collection of stars” in which we live. He observed almost until his demise. May we all find a calling we enjoy as much.

Published last month, A More Perfect Heaven is a richly detailed and fast-paced account of Nicholas Copernicus, the famous but poorly-understood 16th-century Polish scientist who, in essence, delivered astronomy from classical and medieval dogma and created a fertile new paradigm for Galileo, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton.

The book’s first chapters recount the life of Copernicus, including his sometimes mundane day job as a Catholic church administrator and physician to the Bishop of Varmia. Sobel shows how, despite his duties, Copernicus patiently measured motions of the moon and planets for decades, slowly building evidence for his heliocentric theory of the solar system.

After years of measurements, Copernicus was convinced his theory was correct. But he was nearly unmanned in his later years, refusing to publish his work for fear of ridicule from theologians and fellow mathematicians. His rescue arrived unexpectedly in the form of a brash young mathematics professor from Wittenberg, Joachim Rheticus, a Lutheran no less, who wished to learn from Copernicus and see his ideas published.

Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543)

Historical accounts of Rheticus exist. But no one knows how he coaxed Copernicus to produce his opus On The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Here Sobel digs into her bag of creative tools to deposit a spritely, plausible, and entertaining fictional play in the middle of the book. The play deftly humanizes Copernicus and explores his relationship with Rheticus during their two-year collaboration. The play ends with Copernicus finally holding his published work in his hands just moments before he died.

In the final sections of the book, Sobel returns to a traditional narrative to measure the aftermath of the publication of On The Revolutions and its effects on the relationship between religion and science. And she proposes a fascinating idea of how Kepler may have originated his idea that planetary orbits took on the shape of an ellipse rather than a circle.

I had an opportunity to ask Ms. Sobel a few questions about “A More Perfect Heaven”. Here is our exchange…

Brian Ventrudo, Publisher, One-Minute Astronomer (BV): What was it about the story of Nicholas Copernicus that captivated you? Why not write about, for example, Tycho Brahe, who was a far more flamboyant character, or the hard-luck mathematician Johannes Kepler, both of whom made contributions to astronomy that rivalled those of Copernicus?

Dava Sobel (DS): I was struck by the contrast between Copernicus and the young man who convinced him to publish his book. Their interaction, despite their differences of age and religion in a time of religious upheaval, appealed to me as the basis of a stage play.

BV: Copernicus was obviously well educated and intelligent. But he was steeped in classical philosophy and ideas, as were most renaissance scholars. What do you think led him to embrace such a radical idea of putting the sun at the center of things… and then trying to prove it?

DS: He never says how the idea occurred to him. It’s one of the mysteries of the universe. But I like to think that as he considered the movements of the planets individually, he saw patterns that led him to suspect the Sun’s central position. Once he placed the Sun at the center, he saw the planets line up in order of their speeds of revolution. That integration perhaps struck him with the force of a divine revelation.

BV: Copernicus spent decades measuring and calculating the positions of the planets, essentially as a sideline from his considerable duties as a physician and church administrator. You imply in your book he had confidence in his observations and calculations. His scientific work was known by other scholars, and he had the blessing of the Cardinal of Capua to publish. Copernicus even dedicated “On the Revolutions” to Pope Paul III. So why was Copernicus so unwilling to publish his heliocentric theory?

DS: He feared ridicule. It is difficult today, now that everyone “knows” the Earth moves, to remember how counter-intuitive his ideas were. He lived in an age when truth was obtainable only through divine revelation, yet he believed he had uncovered the actual construction of the cosmos. It must have been difficult to put forth such pronouncements — especially when he feared non-astronomers might twist passages of the Bible to discredit him.

BV: As your book describes in a most compelling way, Copernicus was finally persuaded to publish by a young Lutheran mathematics professor Joachim Rheticus, who showed up uninvited on his doorstep. What motivated this fascinating and controversial character?

DS: Rheticus was looking for a way to improve the practice of astrology. He was visiting the most knowledgeable practitioners to increase his own knowledge, and one of them told him about the Polish canon who spun the Earth instead of the Sun and stars. Rheticus wanted to learn about the alternate universe from its source.

BV: The book includes at its midpoint a lively and affecting play about the Copernicus and Rheticus and their time together. What led you to create a play rather than a more traditional narrative?

DS: There is no record of the conversation between Copernicus and Rheticus, nor any correspondence between them. Everyone knows they met, that Rheticus wrote his own summary of Copernicus’s theory and succeeded in convincing Copernicus to publish his life’s work, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. I wanted to imagine what they’d said to each other. In the end, I wrote the play AND the more traditional narrative around it.

BV: Copernicus’ ideas were later confirmed by the measurements of Tycho, the calculations of Kepler, and the telescopic observations of Galileo some 70 years after Copernicus. So how did Galileo end up taking the heat for Copernicus’ ideas?

DS: Copernicus wrote his book in the languages of Latin and mathematics, intending it for a scholarly audience. Some seventy years later, when Galileo made the telescopic discoveries that convinced him Copernicus was right, he trumpeted the news in Italian, in order to reach curious, intelligent laymen who couldn’t afford a university education. This public engagement drew the suspicion and anger of Church authorities.

BV: With so many new discoveries in the past 20 years, this is an exciting time in the field of astronomy. Yet you choose to write about historical discoveries such as those by Copernicus, Galileo, and clockmaker John Harrison. What interests you about the science of the past?

DS: Stories of the past are the foundations of current understanding, yet they are often mythologized or abbreviated. A great discovery is worth re-examining.

BV: What makes for good historical science writing? How is it different than writing about topics of current scientific interest?

DS: A big challenge is to shape the story, which means learning the facts but then picking the ones that move the story along, instead of trying to incorporate every detail. It also helps to love the story you’re telling.

BV: How is your book different from other works on Copernicus? What did you learn by writing it?

DS: It contains a two-act play about him. The project taught me everything I know about Copernicus — and also how to write a play.

BV: If you could sit down for a cup of tea with Nicholas Copernicus, what would you ask him?

DS: What gave him that crazy idea in the first place?

The tale of Neptune’s discovery is a classic piece of astronomical lore that features the extremes of human brilliance and pig-headedness, along with a little good luck.

In the early 19th century, astronomers noticed the position of Uranus was a little “off”.  Sometimes it seemed to unexpectedly speed up in its orbit, and sometimes it slowed down.  This strange motion, they realized, might be the gravitational effect of a more distant and undiscovered planet.

Newton’s law of gravitation gave astronomers the mathematical tools to determine the position of this undiscovered planet, but the number crunching required was formidable in this era before computers, when the only help was a good brain and a lot of pencils and paper.

Two brains were equal to the task.  In England, the young mathematician John Couch Adams took on the problem in 1843 when he was still an undergraduate.  Adams took his solution to the Astronomer Royal, George Airy, with the suggestion to have an English astronomer search for the planet based on Adams’ calculations.  Adams was quiet and unpersuasive young man, and the powerful and formidable Airy never took Adams seriously.

John Couch Adams

The second man to calculate the position of the putative planet was the Frenchman Urban-Jean-Joseph Leverrier, who published his results in 1845 predicting the planet to be very close to the position predicted by Adams.  Airy read Leverrier’s report, still ignoring Adams, and assigned the task of searching for the planet to the methodical and plodding James Challis, who commenced a glacial search for the planet (amazingly) without a decent star map.

Leverrier republished his results in late August 1846 and implored French astronomers to search for the planet.  But Leverrier was a famously abrasive, and had few friends among French academics.  So he, too, was ignored.  So Leverrier wrote to German astronomers in Berlin to ask them for help.  The Germans were game and gave the job to the astronomer Johann Galle and graduate student Heinrich Louis d’Arrest.  The two used a 9-inch refractor and newly published star maps to find the planet on the first night, and confirm its existence the next night.  Just like that.

The discovery by the Germans was headline news all over the world, and set in motion decades of finger pointing in France and England about the lost opportunity for a major discovery.  The French were humiliated.  And George Airy, upon his death, was denied a place of interment in Westminster Abbey for this lost opportunity for England.

Adams held no hard feelings towards Airy or Challis, and later wrote, “I could not expect … that practical astronomers, who were already fully occupied with important labours, would feel as much confidence in the results of my investigations, as I myself did.”

Today, despite the first sighting of the planet by the German duo, the quiet Adams and the irascible Leverrier are credited as the discoverers of Neptune.

Now, as when it as discovered, Neptune lies in the constellation Aquarius.  While today marks its first trip around the Sun since it was discovered on September 24, 1846, Neptune is closest to its discovery position this year on October 27th and November 22nd as it retrogrades later this year.  But it’s within a degree or so of this position right now, so if you want to stay up late and take a peek, here’s an image to help you locate this most distant planet.

The position of Neptune on July 12, 2011, and when it was discovered on September 24, 1846.

Look for Neptune about 2.2 degrees north of iota Aquarii, about 1/3 the way from that star to Ancha (theta Aquarii).  The magnitude 5.4 star HIP 109472 will lie in the same medium-power field of view.

At low magnification, Neptune will appear star-like.  To be sure you’re looking at the planet, switch in a shorter focal-length eyepiece to get higher magnification to reveal the planet’s tiny blue-gray disk.

So if you’re up late, say, past 3 a.m. when Aquarius is high enough in the sky, take a look at Neptune on its “birthday”.  A word of warning… if you are a total beginner, unless you have a go-to telescope, finding Neptune is not an easy task.

Pale Blue Dot – Animation from Ehdubya on Vimeo.

Even now, this is an astonishing feat to recall.  Say what you will about the cold war motivations of the early space program.  Yuri Gagarin was tough, bright, flawed, and crazy brave.

Here’s a look back at the 108-minute flight that changed history…

But in 1760, it was different.

In these early days of the Age of Reason, traveling astronomers braved war, stormy seas, and deadly tropical disease to reach their destinations.  And they were often away from home for several months, or even a couple of years.

But no astronomical expedition comes close to matching the epic hardship and back luck that fell upon the French astronomer Guillaume le Gentil, who braved eleven years of travel around the Indian Ocean in an attempt to observe the transit of Venus across the Sun’s disk.

The transit of Venus was a huge deal in the 18th century.  Fifty years earlier, Sir Edmund Halley worked out a method to figure the distance from the Earth to the Sun by measuring the time it took for Venus to pass across the Sun’s disk from various parts of Earth. Once the distance from the Earth to the Sun was known, astronomers could calculate the distance to other planets in the solar system, and perhaps even to nearby stars.  This was turning point in human understanding of the universe.

But a transit of Venus is a rare event, occurring at eight-year intervals just once per century.  One transit was to occur on June 6, 1761 and another on June 4, 1769.  Guillaume le Gentil was dispatched in March, 1760 at the request of the French Academy of Sciences to observe the transit from the French colony at Pondicherry, India.  He was one of hundreds of European astronomers who traveled across the world to observe the transit.  le Gentil sailed around the Cape of Good Hope to what’s now called Mauritius, and waited months to secure a ride on another ship to Pondicherry.  He found a ship.  But while enroute he discovered the British, who were at war with the French, had seized Pondicherry and he would have to return to Mauritius.  The transit of Venus occurred when he was still at sea, and while he observed the event, he obtained no useful measurements on the moving ship.

He knew the next transit was eight years away, so he stayed in Mauritius and nearby Isle de Bourbon (now called Reunion Island).  He mapped the coast of Madagascar, learned about indigenous culture, and collected samples of the natural history of the region.  He planned carefully for the next transit, determining that Manila was the best nearby place to see it.  He found a Spanish ship to take him to Manila.  And he looked forward to returning to Europe eastward from Manila past Mexico and around South America, completing his trip around the world.

le Gentil arrived in Manila in March, 1766 to prepare for the transit.  But he was not welcome by the Spanish governor of the colony.  Seeking council from France, he was advised to return to Pondicherry to avoid trouble with the Spanish.  He could have refused, but he believed India had a better chance of clear skies during the event.  Once back in India, he calibrated his instruments and enjoyed a month-long spell of perfectly clear skies before the transit.  But on the morning of June 4, 1769, just as the transit of Venus began, the sky filled with clouds for a few hours, just long enough for le Gentil to miss the entire event.  He later learned that his colleagues in Manila enjoyed the transit under perfectly clear sky.

This was all too much for le Gentil, and his bad luck sent him to the brink of insanity.  At the very least, he was exhausted by years of hard travel and wished to return home.  So late in 1769, he pulled himself together, packed his equipment, and set sail for France.

But his troubles were not over.

In early 1770, before leaving Pondicherry, he contracted dysentery.  Determined to press on, he set sail in March 1770, still quite sick.  His illness at sea was overwhelming, so he landed again in Mauritius to recover, where among other events, he watched a valued colleague die of tropical fever.  But le Gentil recovered his health and secured a place on a trading ship to return to France in July.  The ship delayed sailing until November– hurricane season– and first set eastward from Mauritius to Reunion Island instead of westward around the Cape of Good Hope towards Europe.  The ship was caught in a massive storm in early December, when its rudder was badly damaged and its mast nearly sheared off.  The ship back barely made it back to Mauritius on January 1, 1771.

The hapless le Gentil almost gave in to despair.  But he persisted, and in March 1771 he gained berth on a Spanish ship which was repeatedly delayed by more storms near the Cape.  He rounded the Cape in May, and after many tense encounters with English and Spanish ships, who were preparing for war with France, finally landed in his home country on October 8, 1771 after enduring an absence of eleven years, six months, and thirteen days to observe an astronomical event that lasted about six hours.

Ah, to be home!  Given le Gentil’s abnormally long absence and lack of correspondence, his countrymen were shocked to see him alive.  And so, apparently, was his family.  While he was away, his wife had remarried and his relatives declared him dead and ransacked his estate.  What’s more, he lost his place in the French Academy of Sciences, the same institution that sent him on his odyssey in the first place.

It took years of litigation and the intervention of the King of France to set things right.  But le Gentil resumed a normal life.  He remarried, regained his position in the Academy, and lived for another 21 years.  And as with most trips gone awry, the pleasure lies not in the trip itself but in the telling of tales after returning home.  He immortalized his adventures in his two-volume memoir “A Voyage in the Indian Ocean”.

While le Gentil enjoyed robust health in his later years, he died of a sudden serious illness in 1792 at the age of 67.  He was, at least, saved from the escalating horror of the French Revolution, which did not treat kindly the French Academy and its members.

Aside from his epic story, which has been retold for more than two centuries, le Gentil is also remembered by a crater on the Moon and by a large dark nebula in Cygnus near the Northern Coalsack.  He was also the subject of a play by Canadian writer Maureen Hunter in 1992.

As you will learn in an upcoming article, the next transit of Venus occurs on June 6, 2012.  Plan accordingly…

We’ve already looked at the remarkable stories of E. E. Barnard and Henrietta Leavitt.

Today, a snapshot of Milton Humason, a former mule driver and janitor who rose to work with Edwin Hubble to establish the distance scale of the universe and become one of the best-known American astronomers of the 20th century.

Milton Humason was born in Dodge Center, Minnesota in 1891.  When he was 14 years old, his parents sent him to a summer camp on Mount Wilson, near Los Angeles.  The mountain’s forests and soaring views of southern California stole the heart of the prairie boy.  He convinced his parents to let him take a year off school to stay on the mountain and find work.

He never returned to school.

Instead, Humason took up work as a mule driver, hauling lumber up a trail from the Sierra Madre to Mount Wilson to build the new astronomical observatory… an enormous project organized by the astronomy pioneer George Ellery Hale.

In 1911, Humason’s heart was stolen once more: he became engaged to Helen Dowd, the daughter of the chief engineer of the observatory on Mount Wilson.  They married shortly after.  He left to work as a foreman on a ranch in nearby LaVerne.  But he missed the mountain.  In 1917, Humason saw his chance to return and to impress his father-in-law:  he took a position as observatory janitor.  This was a big step up from mule driver and ranch hand.

Soon after, the new observatory posted a position for “night assistant”, which is essentially a helper for astronomers who need to operate the telescope and observatory dome. Humason took up the role.  His patience and skill and diligence brought him to the attention of Hale himself.  In 1919, in the face of stern protests, Hale appointed Humason… a high-school dropout… to the scientific staff of the observatory.  Humason remained in the role until 1954.

Humason worked with Hubble, and later Hubble’s protege, Allan Sandage, to study the spectral redshift of hundreds of galaxies to determine how fast they were receding… their so-called “radial velocity”.   Hubble (correctly) believed the radial velocity of a galaxy was related to its distance, a relationship now known as “Hubble’s Law”.

But these far-away galaxies had low surface brightness, and were notoriously hard to measure.  So Humason developed techniques to optimize the photographic exposures and plate measurements. He determined the radial velocities of 620 galaxies, and helped set the distance scale and age of the universe.   Much of Hubble’s success was attributed to Humason’s painstaking measurements.

Milton Humason

For his achievements, Humason was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Lund in Sweden.  He retired in 1957, and died in Mendocino, California, in 1972 at the age of 80.

In 2005, Humason’s life was the subject of the musical “The Expanding Sky” by the writer Stan Peal.

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Discover how to take great astro-photos with your digital camera.  Capture images of Orion rising over the trees above the eastern horizon, or Taurus and the Pleiades high in the dark winter sky.  No special experience required.  Click here to learn more…

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Lowell came from an old, wealthy Boston family that first settled the Cape Ann peninsula of Massachusetts in 1639.  His brother Abbot was president of Harvard University for 24 years.  And Percival himself was a Harvard grad, majoring in mathematics.  He developed an interest in astronomy as a student and delivered a graduation address on the “nebular hypothesis” of solar system formation.

But that was it for astronomy for young Percy… or so it seemed.  After Harvard, Lowell tended to the family business and traveled occasionally to Korea and Japan for 17 years.  He served as a counselor for a Korean diplomatic mission to the U.S.  and wrote four academic books about Japan and its culture, including “The Soul of the Far East” in 1888.

Then, without apparent reason, he caught the Mars bug.  Inspired by the writings of Camille Flammarion and the observations by Schiaparelli of Martian canali (which translates from Italian as channels, not canals), Lowell became convinced Mars was inhabited by an intelligent civilization.

In 1894, Lowell used his fortune to quickly build an observatory near Flagstaff in the clear, dry Arizona sky.  He set up two borrowed refracting telescopes and set to work sketching the surface features of Mars, and he continued sketching and making measurements of Mars for more than 15 years.  His observatory eventually housed an impressive 24-inch refractor made by Alvan Clark.  The telescope remains in use at Lowell observatory to this day.

Not long after his first observations in 1894, Lowell loudly announced his discovery of canals and oases on Mars, which he believed were created by the inhabitants of the Red Planet.  The public was captivated.  Lowell became world famous.  And the idea of life on Mars remained in the public consciousness for decades.

One of Lowell’s sketches of Mars, circa 1895

Professional astronomers had a different reaction to Lowell.  Many were disgusted at Lowell’s thirst for publicity.  Some believed he jumped the gun to announce life on Mars without more careful study and analysis.  No other astronomers could see canals on Mars, including the eagle-eyed E. E. Barnard with the 36-inch telescope at Lick Observatory.

Many began to believe (correctly) that the canals were an optical illusion.  Skepticism about the canals increased amongst astronomers over the 20th century.  Though it was not until Mariner 4′s flyby was the existence of canals was disproved completely.

If Lowell was troubled by the scorn and derision of the astronomical establishment, he didn’t let it show.  He remained at his telescope for the rest of his life, making drawings of Mars, as well patiently sketching an early map of Venus.  Though again, what he saw on Venus was uncertain since we know now Venus reveals no surface features in visible light.

Lowell also predicted a ninth planet– which he called Planet X– based on oddities in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune.  He searched for Planet X himself until his death in 1916.  The observatory’s staff continued the search until 1930, when Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto at Lowell Observatory.  Though it turns out Pluto was too small to be Planet X, and the whole issue disappeared when, much later, accurate determination of the mass of Neptune showed the outer planets moved as expected.

So Lowell was wrong on Mars.  He was wrong on Venus.  He was wrong on Planet X.

Was he a failure?

We think not.  Though he made few original scientific discoveries, Lowell left a legacy of a world-class observatory which still contributes to the advancement of human knowledge.  And he stimulated public imagination for planetary exploration more than anyone in his time.

We wonder how many astronomers of the past century owe their careers to Lowell’s imagination and dedication.

Today, Lowell’s Observatory is a U.S. National Historic Landmark.  His mausoleum stands on Mars Hill near the observatory.

*** Highly Recommended ***

Discover how to take great astro-photos with your digital camera.  Capture images of Orion rising over the trees above the eastern horizon, or Taurus and the Pleiades high in the dark winter sky.  No special experience required.  Click here to learn more…

* * * * *

One of our favorites is the French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille.  You’ve see his name mentioned many times in the pages of One-Minute Astronomer as the discoverer of several deep-sky objects, especially in the southern hemisphere.  In the mid-18th century, in a time before Messier and the Herschels, the humble and diligent Lacaille cataloged more stars than all other astronomers of his era combined, and assigned names and places for southern constellations still in use today.

Born in 1713, the young Lacaille was left destitute by the death of his father.  He turned to theological studies, earned the sponsorship of a nobleman, and completed his religious work with the title of Abbe.  But his interest was consumed by science, so he obtained work as a geographer and cartographer.  He surveyed the French coast and made precise measurements of longitude.  His diligence earned him admission to the French Academy, and he secured a position as mathematics professor at Mazarin College, with a small observatory at his disposal.

Though he made many celestial measurements from northern France, the other half of the sky beckoned.  In 1750, he implored the Academy to let him travel to South Africa to catalog the southern stars.  They granted his wish.  Lacaille set sail for Cape Town, before it was called Cape Town, and set up shop near the slopes of Table Mountain.  In just one year, using an absurdly small 1/2-inch refractor, he measured the positions of 9,766 stars and logged 42 deep sky objects including 47 Tucanae, omega Centauri, and the eta Carinae nebula.

He also named 14 obscure southern constellations that have left many stargazers scratching their heads.  Unlike the northern sky, there are no grand mythological names here; Lacaille lived in a time that admired the tools of science and reason.  Hence the names of constellations such as..

• Antlia Pneumatica, the Air Pump
• Caelum, the Engraving Tool
• Circinus, the Geometer’s Compasses
• Fornax Chemica, the Chemist’s Furnace
• Horologium Oscillatorium, the Pendulum Clock
• Mons Mensae, Table Mountain
• Microscopium, the Microscope
• Norma et Regula, the Level and Square
• Octans, the Octant
• Pictor, the Painter’s Easel
• Pyxis Nautica, the Ship’s Compass
• Reticulum Rhomboidalis, the eyepiece reticle, and
• Sculptor, the Sculptor’s workshops;

You can see why, when an astronomer from Lick Observatory first saw the far-southern sky, he said it looked like somebody’s attic!

Alas, Lacaille did not live to see his southern catalog published.  Upon returning to France, the modest astronomer was shocked to learn he had become relatively famous for his work in South Africa.  (Scientists were like rock stars in those days).  He returned to his professorship and continued to grind away at his measurements.  He died in 1762, at the age of 49, from rigors associated with overwork.

According to his biographer David Evans, Lacaille “lived for science and nothing else”.  He had few friends and displayed fewer emotions, and left no record of a private life or ambition or the search for recognition.  He lived and died for the stars.  And he let his work stand as his memorial.

In honor of his work, a 60-cm telescope at Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean will be named the La-Caille telescope.

There were just 66 years between the first flight of the Wright brother’s wood-and-cloth glider with a strapped-on 30 horsepower engine to the 3,300 ton Saturn V rocket that carried Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins to the moon.  The event still staggers the imagination.

And in the last 40 years… what?  Not much in terms of manned spaceflight.  Perhaps that’s what amazes me most of all about the moon landings: that we lost interest in such achievements so quickly.  Not sure if it’s true, but I’ve read the moon landings are one of the few historical technological achievements that we cannot repeat, even if we wanted too.  The full complement of know-how and infrastructure to put humans on the moon no longer exists.

But take heart.  Though it will be a long time until astronauts walk on the Moon or Mars, there were (and are) dozens of unmanned spacecraft exploring the solar system.  Every planet has been explored to some extent.  Even Pluto will get a visit by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015.  And the Pioneer 10, 11 and the Voyager 1 spacecraft are venturing beyond the solar system into interstellar space.  Voyager 1 will have enough power to continue radio transmission to Earth until 2025, 48 years after it was launched.  Darned impressive.

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On July 22, the moon passed between the Earth and the sun, causing a total solar eclipse.  Visible in a narrow band from China and India and into the Pacific Ocean, the eclipse passed right over the city of Shanghai.  Millions looked up to see one of the most magnificent sights in nature.  Here’s a video of the event from an Indian news agency.

Solar eclipses occur when the moon is “new”.  The eclipse happened more than 2 days ago, which means the moon is now a waxing crescent and perfectly positioned for summer viewing with a telescope or binoculars.  You can discover more about the moon’s movements and surface features with Lunar Phase Pro.

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And an unexpected even this week… something big crashed into Jupiter.  Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley discovered the impact site with his 14.5-inch telescope and imaging system.  He almost missed the discovery when he went back inside to watch the British Open golf tournament.  But his work ethic prevailed.  Here’s a link to Wesley’s image of the impact.  It was likely a small comet or asteroid that hit Jupiter, dredging up material from the planet’s lower atmosphere.

You can see Jupiter for yourself in the southeastern sky after 11 p.m. or so.  It’s the brightest thing in that part of the sky.  You’ll likely not see the impact site, however, at least not visually.  But as Wesley’s discovery proves, there are many unexpected and beautiful things for amateur stargazers to discover.

Next week… the “Mars Hoax”; and we’ll start a series of short articles on how to safely observe the Sun.