okiscopey
20-08-2007, 12:46 AM
Well, its raining cats and dogs here in Bondi, so what to do? Bash the keyboard about an obscure snippet of astro history I've just heard about, that's what.
The first port of call is Macquarie University, where Fred Watson (Astronomer-in-Charge, AAO) has just given a well-attended public talk, Telescopes of the Future as part of National Science & Engineering Week.
(http://www.astronomy.mq.edu.au/scienceweek2007/talk1.html)
The whole presentation was entertaining and informative, as would be expected from Fred, and after a plug for the latest 'must-have' paperback edition of his book Stargazer: The Life And Times of the Telescope, he was joined by three leading astro-engineers for audience questions afterwards. The panel included Dr David DeBoer of the Australia Telescope National Facility, who leads the team building the Australian SKA Pathfinder telescope in WA. This is a $100m+ project which aims to show that Australia is the best location for the giant Square Kilometer Array radio telescope, which is expected to go into operation sometime around 2020.
One of the most amusing sections of Fred's talk was about 'learning from past mistakes'. Here's an extract about Hevelius, which should make folks think twice about any gripes they have with modern mounts:
"Early telescope makers solved the problems of chromatic and spherical aberration by making the focal length of an objective very long in comparison with its diameter, reducing both aberrations to a level that would not be noticeable, resulting in long, spindly telescopes. Johannes Hevelius, a seventeenth century amateur in the city of Danzig, built a monstrous telescope whose focal length was 150 feet, supported from a mast 90 feet high. It worked more like the rigging of a sailing ship than an optical instrument, and was so ungainly that a fair number of men were needed to move and point it in the right direction. Any breeze would leave it quivering uncontrollably."
I was even more intrigued by Fred's expose of Andrew Barclay, a locomotive engineer of Kilmarnock, Scotland. I hadn't heard of Barclay before, even through I come from that part of the world. Fred explained that Barclay was well-known to train buffs, but less so to those afflicted by our particular obsession. Here's an extract from http://futuremuseum.co.uk (whatever that is):
"In the second half of the 19th Century, Kilmarnock became an important centre for the construction of railway locomotives. The best known and most prolific builder was Andrew Barclay. His company, now trading as Hunslet-Barclay, is the sole survivor of all the Scottish locomotive builders. He was born in Kilbirnie, North Ayrshire. His father was an engineer, so were his brothers, but in this remarkable family it was Andrew who stood out as an inventive genius.
He was an amateur astronomer and began his career designing telescopes, but soon gained a reputation as an engineer. It wasn’t long before he began tinkering with the idea of stationary steam engines and the first one he built was to his own design and was for use in his own factory. The castings were made at the Caledonian Foundry in Commerce Street, Glasgow. Later, Barclay was to use that same name for his works in Kilmarnock. He built his first steam locomotive in 1859 and locomotive work soon came to dominate his company.
Barclay’s love of astronomy very nearly ruined his company. He used so much of the company’s manpower and resources building a great telescope that the company nearly went under."
What this article doesn't say, and what Fred did, was that Barclay's optics were atrocious. Not only that, he believed that the distorted planetary views he obtained revealed some truth about the bodies' actual structure, and published his observations in The English Mechanic.
The attached sketches give an idea of the grotesque objects that were supposed to inhabit the Solar System.
In the book New Lands, 1923, Charles Fort writes about Barclay's papers:
"One turns the not very attractive-looking pages of the English Mechanic, 1893, glaring at one, a sketch of such a botanico-pathologic monstrosity as a musk melon with rows of bunions on it. The reader is told, by Andrew Barclay, FRAS ... that this enormity is the planet Jupiter, according to the speculum of his Gregorian telescope.
The planet Mars is a dark sphere, surrounded by a thick ring of lighter material. Attached to it, another sphere, of half its diameter - a sketch as gross and repellent to a conventionalist as the museum-freak, in whose body the head of a dangling twin is embedded, its dwarfed body lopping out from his side. There is a description by Mr. Barclay, according to whom the main body is red and the proturberance blue.
A gallery of monstrosities: the planet Jupiter, six times encircled with lumps; afflicted Mars, with his partly embedded twin reduced in size, but still a distress to all properly trained observers; the planet Saturn, shaped like a mushroom with a ring around it."
In the next issue of the English Mechanic, Capt. Noble, FRAS, writes that if he had such a telescope, he would dispose of the optical parts for whatever they would bring, and make a chimney cowl of the tube.
(Ref: http://www.sacred-texts.com/fort/lands/lands105.htm)
Of course, Charles Fort was a bit odd himself (not sure where I got this text from):
"Charles Fort was a crank in the best sense of the word. Lovecraft and the X-files can't begin to compete with the spooky stuff he uncovered. In the early twentieth century he put together great quantities of exhaustively documented 'puzzling evidence' ... data which science is unable or unwilling to explain.
Examples of the odd phenomena in Fort's books include many of what are variously referred to as occult, supernatural, and paranormal. Reported events include teleportation (a term Fort is generally credited with coining); poltergeist events; falls of frogs, fishes ... unaccountable noises, spontaneous fires; levitation; ball lightning (a term explicitly used by Fort); unidentified flying objects; mysterious appearances and disappearances. He also is perhaps the first person to explain strange human appearances and disappearances by the hypothesis of alien abduction, specifically suggesting that strange lights or object sighted in the skies might be alien spacecraft.
Many of these phenomena are now collectively and conveniently referred to as 'Fortean' phenomena, whilst others have developed into their own schools of thought, for example, UFOs into ufology, or the reports of unconfirmed animals classified as cryptozoology."
Yes, there's no doubt about it, there are a lot of strange people in this world.
Thankfully, none of them are members of IIS!
The first port of call is Macquarie University, where Fred Watson (Astronomer-in-Charge, AAO) has just given a well-attended public talk, Telescopes of the Future as part of National Science & Engineering Week.
(http://www.astronomy.mq.edu.au/scienceweek2007/talk1.html)
The whole presentation was entertaining and informative, as would be expected from Fred, and after a plug for the latest 'must-have' paperback edition of his book Stargazer: The Life And Times of the Telescope, he was joined by three leading astro-engineers for audience questions afterwards. The panel included Dr David DeBoer of the Australia Telescope National Facility, who leads the team building the Australian SKA Pathfinder telescope in WA. This is a $100m+ project which aims to show that Australia is the best location for the giant Square Kilometer Array radio telescope, which is expected to go into operation sometime around 2020.
One of the most amusing sections of Fred's talk was about 'learning from past mistakes'. Here's an extract about Hevelius, which should make folks think twice about any gripes they have with modern mounts:
"Early telescope makers solved the problems of chromatic and spherical aberration by making the focal length of an objective very long in comparison with its diameter, reducing both aberrations to a level that would not be noticeable, resulting in long, spindly telescopes. Johannes Hevelius, a seventeenth century amateur in the city of Danzig, built a monstrous telescope whose focal length was 150 feet, supported from a mast 90 feet high. It worked more like the rigging of a sailing ship than an optical instrument, and was so ungainly that a fair number of men were needed to move and point it in the right direction. Any breeze would leave it quivering uncontrollably."
I was even more intrigued by Fred's expose of Andrew Barclay, a locomotive engineer of Kilmarnock, Scotland. I hadn't heard of Barclay before, even through I come from that part of the world. Fred explained that Barclay was well-known to train buffs, but less so to those afflicted by our particular obsession. Here's an extract from http://futuremuseum.co.uk (whatever that is):
"In the second half of the 19th Century, Kilmarnock became an important centre for the construction of railway locomotives. The best known and most prolific builder was Andrew Barclay. His company, now trading as Hunslet-Barclay, is the sole survivor of all the Scottish locomotive builders. He was born in Kilbirnie, North Ayrshire. His father was an engineer, so were his brothers, but in this remarkable family it was Andrew who stood out as an inventive genius.
He was an amateur astronomer and began his career designing telescopes, but soon gained a reputation as an engineer. It wasn’t long before he began tinkering with the idea of stationary steam engines and the first one he built was to his own design and was for use in his own factory. The castings were made at the Caledonian Foundry in Commerce Street, Glasgow. Later, Barclay was to use that same name for his works in Kilmarnock. He built his first steam locomotive in 1859 and locomotive work soon came to dominate his company.
Barclay’s love of astronomy very nearly ruined his company. He used so much of the company’s manpower and resources building a great telescope that the company nearly went under."
What this article doesn't say, and what Fred did, was that Barclay's optics were atrocious. Not only that, he believed that the distorted planetary views he obtained revealed some truth about the bodies' actual structure, and published his observations in The English Mechanic.
The attached sketches give an idea of the grotesque objects that were supposed to inhabit the Solar System.
In the book New Lands, 1923, Charles Fort writes about Barclay's papers:
"One turns the not very attractive-looking pages of the English Mechanic, 1893, glaring at one, a sketch of such a botanico-pathologic monstrosity as a musk melon with rows of bunions on it. The reader is told, by Andrew Barclay, FRAS ... that this enormity is the planet Jupiter, according to the speculum of his Gregorian telescope.
The planet Mars is a dark sphere, surrounded by a thick ring of lighter material. Attached to it, another sphere, of half its diameter - a sketch as gross and repellent to a conventionalist as the museum-freak, in whose body the head of a dangling twin is embedded, its dwarfed body lopping out from his side. There is a description by Mr. Barclay, according to whom the main body is red and the proturberance blue.
A gallery of monstrosities: the planet Jupiter, six times encircled with lumps; afflicted Mars, with his partly embedded twin reduced in size, but still a distress to all properly trained observers; the planet Saturn, shaped like a mushroom with a ring around it."
In the next issue of the English Mechanic, Capt. Noble, FRAS, writes that if he had such a telescope, he would dispose of the optical parts for whatever they would bring, and make a chimney cowl of the tube.
(Ref: http://www.sacred-texts.com/fort/lands/lands105.htm)
Of course, Charles Fort was a bit odd himself (not sure where I got this text from):
"Charles Fort was a crank in the best sense of the word. Lovecraft and the X-files can't begin to compete with the spooky stuff he uncovered. In the early twentieth century he put together great quantities of exhaustively documented 'puzzling evidence' ... data which science is unable or unwilling to explain.
Examples of the odd phenomena in Fort's books include many of what are variously referred to as occult, supernatural, and paranormal. Reported events include teleportation (a term Fort is generally credited with coining); poltergeist events; falls of frogs, fishes ... unaccountable noises, spontaneous fires; levitation; ball lightning (a term explicitly used by Fort); unidentified flying objects; mysterious appearances and disappearances. He also is perhaps the first person to explain strange human appearances and disappearances by the hypothesis of alien abduction, specifically suggesting that strange lights or object sighted in the skies might be alien spacecraft.
Many of these phenomena are now collectively and conveniently referred to as 'Fortean' phenomena, whilst others have developed into their own schools of thought, for example, UFOs into ufology, or the reports of unconfirmed animals classified as cryptozoology."
Yes, there's no doubt about it, there are a lot of strange people in this world.
Thankfully, none of them are members of IIS!