chester under a pale moon - wordpress.com · of ‘the village green preservation ... already...

THIS striking painting is Chester Castle by Moonlight by Henry Pether(1828-65). Pether was a landscape painter who specialised in moon-

light scenes. Some of the architectural details visible imply a datebetween 1853-61. Nocturnal salmon fishing is in progress on the RiverDee. The bulk of Chester Castle looms on the left and the towers of StMary-on-the-Hill and St John the Baptist can also be seen. The paintingnow hangs in the Grosvenor Museum, Chester, where it is even moreimpressive than the reproduction here.

The busy city of Chester was the backdrop against which HenryPrescott (1649-1719) wrote his diary. Prescott was not an astronomer buthe recorded numerous astronomical events that he witnessed. RichardSargent gave a fascinating talk about these astronomical entries duringthe joint meeting that the SHA held with the North West Group ofAstronomical Societies in March. A report of this meeting, together withmuch other material, appears inside. (Pether’s painting is reproduced herecourtesy of Richard Sargent.)

Right: The Grosvenor Museum, Chester.

Issue 17October 2008

Chester under a pale Moon

EditorialClive Davenhall

ON her recent album AwkwardAnnie the English folk singer

Kate Rusby has included a versionof ‘The Village Green PreservationSociety,’ a lament for things oncefamiliar that are now passing, and aplea to preserve them: ‘Preservingthe old ways from being abused. /Protecting the new ways, for me andfor you. / What more can we do?’

The verses rehearse a melancholy,eclectic litany of things that werealready vanishing when the songwas written in the mid-1960s. Someare little recalled now: who speaksof Mrs Mopp and good old MotherRiley? Others are just quirky: theSherlock Holmes English-speakingVernacular, Fu Manchu, Moriartyand Dracula. Most, however, seemas immediate now as then: Tudorhouses, antique tables, little shops,china cups and strawberry jam.

The SHA, it seems to me, isastronomy’s ‘Village GreenPreservation Society,’ preservingand recording its history. The past

few months have not been easy forthe Society. Long-standingTreasurer Ken Goward has had tostand down due to ill-health,Chairman Gilbert Satterthwaite hasalso not been well and several othermembers of the Council have expe-rienced illness in their immediatefamilies (see below). Our best wish-es go to all concerned. Nonethelessthe Autumn Conference went aheadas planned, the next issue of TheAntiquarian Astronomer is onschedule for publication aroundChristmas and a full programme ofmeetings is planned for 2009. TheSociety is in good health even if itsOfficers are not.

Nonetheless, for the Society tofunction properly it needs inputfrom members, that is from you. Onp39 we have the first of a new seriesby Roger Jones on the Society’sCounty Survey. More volunteers arerequired to work on the Survey andyou are encouraged to assist. Papersfor The Antiquarian Astronomer and

articles for the Newsletter (includingthe new Observatory scrapbookseries, see p40) are always welcome.Finally, but not least, there are sever-al requests for information in thisissue: Paul Haley asks aboutProfessor Mayer, W.S. Gilman Jnr,astronomical stained glass windowsand the eclipse of 1836 (p5); CharlesBarclay would like to know aboutthe previous owner (from Torquay)of the dome of the BlackettObservatory (p21); there is a requestfor details of clocks keeping localtime (p34) and several others. If youcan throw any light on these issuesthen please write in. We will publishsuitable communications and passon any details. More importantly,the Society needs feedback frommembers in order to function cor-rectly.

We are the Village GreenPreservation Society. What morecan we do?

SHA Newsletter Issue 17 October 2008

Society NewsKevin Kilburn and Clive Davenhall

Kenneth GowardWe are sad to report that SHATreasurer Ken Goward has experi-enced a recurrence of long-standinghealth problems and consequentlyhas had to stand down as Treasurer.In the short term other Councillorshave taken on his duties. In particu-lar Peter Hingley kindly handledregistration and ticket bookings forthe Autumn Conference (see below)and all communications on this mat-ter should be sent to him. In thelonger term Council is seeking tofind a replacement Treasurer (seethe box, right).

Ken plans to continue as aCouncillor and continues to play anactive role in Society affairs, partic-ularly concerning the hand-over ofthe Treasurer’s duties. Ken has beeninvolved in the SHA since before itsFounding and the Society owns himan enormous debt for his previouswork and continuing efforts. Wesend all our best wishes to him andhis family.

The past few months have not beeneasy for several members of theCouncil. Chairman GilbertSatterthwaite has also been ill andother members have experienced ill-ness in their immediate family. Our

best wishes go to all affected.Despite these problems the AutumnConference went ahead as plannedand a full programme of events isbeing developed for next year.

Ken Goward pictured during therecent SHA AGM and Spring

Conference held at the Institute ofAstronomy, Cambridge during May.


Recent SHA eventsThe SHA held three events earlier in2008:

Sat. 29 March. Joint meeting withthe Manchester AstronomicalSociety and the North West Groupof Astronomical Societies held inChetham’s Library, Manchester.

Sat. 17 May. AGM and SpringConference at the Institute ofAstronomy, Cambridge.

Sat. 2 August. Summer Picnic heldat Marlborough College, Wiltshire.

Reports of the joint meeting atChetham’s Library and the SummerPicnic appear later in this issue (seep9 and p21, respectively). Thetheme of the AGM and SpringConference was William Hugginsand the Development ofAstronomical Spectroscopy. A write-up is in preparation and shouldappear in the next issue of theNewsletter.

Autumn ConferenceThe SHA Autumn Conference washeld on Saturday 4 October between9:30 am and 5:15 pm. As usual, thevenue was the Birmingham andMidland Institute (BMI) in centralBirmingham.

The meeting was fortunate to havetwo very distinguished speakers.Prof. Nick Kanas (University ofCalifornia at San Francisco) deliv-ered the first Alan Cox MemorialLecture on Star Maps. Prof. Kanas isan expert on the history of celestialcartography and has recently pub-

lished the definitive study of thesubject (reviewed on p35). He gavea fascinating talk on this importanttopic, profusely illustrated withslides often made from charts in hisown collection.

Sir Arnold Wolfendale (Durham),Astronomer Royal 1991-95, spokeon Astronomers Royal Through theAges. He gave a most informativeand entertaining talk, illustratingsome of the achievements of hispredecessors and enlivened bynumerous anecdotes from some ofthe obscurer corners of astronomicalhistory.

The full list of talks was:

Registration

Kevin Kilburn, Welcome

Andrew Lound, Lunatik Astronomy

Clive Davenhall, The Invention of

the Dutch Telescope

Lee MacDonald, The Isaac NewtonTelescope

Lunch

John Armitage, Lord Wrottesley

Sir Arnold Wolfendale, AstronomersRoyal Through the Ages

Afternoon refreshments

Prof. Nick Kanas, Star Maps (AlanCox Memorial Lecture)

Gilbert Satterthwaite, Concludingremarks

Close.

In addition the Pendrell HallObservatory Group and localAstronomical Societies provideddisplays. A report will appear in afuture issue of the Newsletter.

New Treasurer soughtUnfortunately long-standing SHA Treasurer Ken Goward has had to stand down due to continuing healthproblems (see left) and we need to appoint a replacement. The duties are not onerous and include maintain-ing the membership list, handling membership inquiries, keeping track of the Society’s expenses, and prepar-ing the annual accounts. Some experience of bookkeeping or accountancy is desirable but not strictly neces-sary. However, access to e-mail is essential; Council conducts most of its business electronically. If you areinterested please contact Kevin Kilburn in the first instance (contact details on the back page). We hope tohear from you.

Members enjoy refreshments in the foyer of the Institute of Astronomyduring the AGM and Spring Conference.


SHA meetings in 2009The SHA is planning a full pro-gramme of meetings for 2009. Thefollowing events are scheduled forthe first part of the year.

Sat. 28 March 2009. A joint meet-ing with the History Group of theRoyal Meteorological Society(RMetS), to be held in the premisesof the RAS in Burlington House,Piccadilly, London.

Fri. 8 May. Mars Before the SpaceAge, at the RAS premises, London.This event is an RAS DiscussionMeeting, not an SHA event, but islikely to be of interest and is includ-ed for completeness.

Sat. 18 July. AGM and SummerConference, to be held at theNational Maritime Museum,Greenwich. In a departure from pre-vious practice, the SummerConference will be a joint meetingwith the Scientific InstrumentSociety (http://www.sis.org.uk/).

Finally, a meeting celebrating thelife and work of Dr David Dewhirst,eminent historian of astronomy andSHA member, is to be held at theInstitute of Astronomy, Cambridge.The date is not fixed yet, but is like-ly to be between March and June.

The programmes for these meet-ings are well-advanced. A completelist of events for 2009, with furtherparticulars, will be included in thenext issue of the Newsletter.

SHA Councilmeetings in 2008Council meetings were successfullyheld on Saturday 23 February andSaturday 28 June. The remainingCouncil meeting of 2008 will beheld at 1:00 pm, Saturday 1November at the Institute ofAstronomy, University ofCambridge. Council meetings arenot open due to lack of space, butany member may attend by priorarrangement with the Secretary.

RAS AstronomicalHeritage CommitteeWe are pleased to announce thatSHA Councillor and RAS LibrarianPeter Hingley has recently joinedthe RAS Astronomical HeritageCommittee. He joins SHACouncillor and Founding SecretaryStuart Williams who is already amember. The appointment of MrHingley strengthens the Society’slinks with the Heritage Committee,

with whom we hope to continue towork.

Communication withmembersThere have been a couple of casesrecently when copies of theNewsletter sent to members havegone astray in the post. We onlyknow about these cases because themembers concerned happened tocontact us, which is, essentially, amatter of chance.

In future, shortly after an issue ofthe Newsletter is dispatched we willforward an announcement to thosemembers for whom we have an e-mail address. Members receivingthis message will know to expect acopy and, if one does not arrive, beable to request a replacement. StuartWilliams ([email protected]) is co-ordinating the listof member’s e-mail addresses. Ifyou wish to be added to this list orsuspect that the details that we havefor you are out of date please contactStuart with current information.

Similarly, if you think that you aremissing any back issues that youshould have received then pleasecontact us. The editorial address isgiven on the back page.

Meteorological measure-ments being recorded at the

Royal ObservatoryGreenwich. This engravingappeared in the Illustrated

London News in 1881(vol. LXXVIII). The Society

will hold a joint meetingwith the History Group ofthe Royal MeteorologicalSociety in March 2009.

Webb-SHAREupdatePrevious reportsof this HeritageLottery fundedproject haveappeared inNewsletters 14 (October 2007, pp4-5) and 16 (July 2008, pp7-8.).Research volunteers have nowbegun the transcription of the Webb-Ranyard letters. Arthur CowperRanyard (1845-1895) began writingto the Revd T.W. Webb as a thirteen-year old boy in 1858. Today we havea fascinating one-sided correspon-dence to unravel since only thereplies from TWW are available.Webb’s letters passed to the RoyalAstronomical Society and they arebeing digitised prior to a full tran-scription. Janet and Mark Robinson(authors of the recent biography ofWebb, The Stargazer of Hardwicke,reviewed in Newsletter 13, February2007, pp17-18) report that ‘the let-ters are proving interesting, particu-larly for the researchers who arelearning much about the Webbs’way of life. There is also astronomi-cal discussion.’

One of the main interests of theRobinsons in the letters is to seewhat light they shed on Webb’soverseas correspondence and linkswith foreign astronomers. Theyalmost totally omitted this aspect ofWebb’s work from their biography.In this context they already have aquery arising from a letter written toRanyard in December 1869. The let-ter mentions Professor Mayer of theLe High University, Pennsylvaniawho later moved on to the Steven’sInstitute of Technology. The librari-an at Le High thinks that Mayer’spapers are in Princeton but no reply

has been received from there to date.Does anyone know about Mayer?Also in this letter there is a referenceto W.S. Gilman Jnr, son of the NewYork banker of that name. Did hehave any astronomical eminence?

One researcher is digging deepinto the background of G.H. Withand has learned much about his edu-cation. The whereabouts of most ofhis mirrors that are in the publicdomain are being listed with somesuccess. Does anyone know of Withmirrors that are in private hands?

The third Herefordshireastronomer in Webb-Share is theRevd Henry Cooper Key. The proj-ect team are delighted to have per-mission to film a Victorian re-enact-ment in the former Stretton Rectory(now the Priory Hotel in StrettonSugwas, near Hereford) where HCKand his wife Ellen Arabella Keylived. Scripting is underway for tenscenes, based on a ‘star party’ eventin November 1865. By the end ofthis year the short film will be avail-able for download from the Web sitehttp://www.spacewatch.co.uk.

Forthcoming events for Webb-Share include:

Herefordshire AstronomicalSociety, Annual Webb Lecture onThursday 6 November 2008 (7-9pm) at the Kindle Centre inHereford to be delivered by Janetand Mark Robinson.

Woolhope Club, Saturday 7January 2009 (2-4pm) at the ShireHall in Hereford; a talk about theRevd H.C. Key by Paul Haley.

Hardwicke Church (near Hay-on-Wye), Thursday 20 August 2009;a special celebration of the 150thanniversary of the publication of thefirst edition of Webb’s CelestialObjects for Common Telescopes.

The photograph above shows partof a pair of stained glass windows inSt Mary Magdalene Church,Stretton Sugwas. They were fundedby the Hereford PhilharmonicSociety in memorial of the RevdH.C. Key, who served as Librarianto HPS for eleven years until hisdeath in 1879. The dedication was‘The heavens declare the glory ofGod’ and the astronomical heritagecaptured in the glass is a wonderfulsight. Two questions arise:

We know the windows were madeby Clayton and Bell of London, but


Further NewsCompiled by Clive Davenhall

The magnificent pair of stained glass windows in St Mary MagdaleneChurch, Stretton Sugwas commemorating the Revd H.C. Key (photographreproduced courtesy Revd J. Morrison, the current rector of St Mary’s).


how many other astronomicalstained glass windows survive in theUK today, especially of this size?

We know that Revd Key saw twosolar eclipses in his lifetime, proba-bly including ‘Baily’s Beads’ in1836 on a visit to Scotland, but cananyone confirm the dates?

More details for Webb-Share canbe obtained from Paul Haley (TheShare Initiative, TSI,): telephone01981 251029, [email protected], Web sitehttp://www.spacewatch.co.uk.

Finally, TSI have now applied for asecond astronomical heritage proj-ect, with a decision expected byDecember for a two-year projectbeginning in January 2009. ‘Astro-Cymru: Celebrating 400 years ofWelsh Astronomy’ is currently beingconsidered by HLF-Wales - moredetails (hopefully) coming soon! Inthe mean time TSI would like toacknowledge the support providedby Swansea Astronomical Society,the University of Glamorgan,Powysland Museum, YsgolPenmaes, the Penllergare Trust andmany other individuals.(Contributed by Paul Haley.)

Caesar’s incursionre-datedIt is a commonplace that the firstRoman military incursion intoBritain was made by Julius Caesarin 55 BC, though it is perhaps lesswell-known that there is a long-standing question about the actualdate and place of the landing.

Caesar’s landfall is usually under-stood to have occurred on 26-27August on an open beach nearWalmer and Deal in Kent. Thesedetails come from Caesar’s owndescription in his Commentaries onthe Gallic War. After the fleetarrived at Dover he both noted thephase of the Moon and described thedistance travelled and landmarkspassed before a suitable landing sitewas found.

This description tallies well with a

landing close to Deal. However, theproblem is that on the 26-27 Augustthe tidal currents would have beenflowing strongly in the wrong direc-tion, making the trip from Dover toDeal impossible. This discrepancyhas been studied by various authors,including Sir George Airy.

Now a team of researchers fromTexas State University-San Marcoscomprising Professors DonaldOlson and Russell Doescher, andHonours students Kellie Beicker andAmanda Gregory believe that theyhave resolved the problem. By ahappy coincidence the lunar cycle inAugust 2007 closely matched theorientation in August 55 BC. Theteam travelled to Deal and madeextensive in situ measurementswhich confirmed the problems withthe tides.

However, two important pieces ofevidence were historical. In ValeriusMaximus’ Memorable Deeds andSayings, written in the first centuryAD, a soldier on the expedition is

recorded as mentioning that the tidewas falling during the landing.Secondly in 1937 the historian R.G.Collingwood suggested that therewas probably a transcription error inthe date for the landing, rendering aRoman IV into a VII or VIII.Converted to the modern calendar,correcting for this error shifts thelanding date to 22-23 August. Thisrevised date fits perfectly: the tidewould then have been flowing in theright direction for the trip north-eastfrom Dover to a landing close toDeal.(Thanks to Ken Goward for pointingout this item.)

Further reading:

University of Texas press release:http://www.txstate.edu/news/news_releases/news_archive/2008/06/Caesar062308.html

Article in Sky and Telescope:http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/21410774.html

In a development unrelated to the re-dating of Caesar’s landing this bustwas recovered from an underwater excavation in the River Rhone near

Arles during May this year. It is not merely believed to be a bust of JuliusCaesar, but has been dated to 46 BC, making it the only one known to have

been sculpted while he was still alive.


Tycho’s grave to beexamined?Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), the greatobservational astronomer of theRenaissance, and his wife are buriedin the Church of Our Lady in frontof Týn in Prague. They had settled inthat city following Brahe’s finalrelocation to the Court of RudolphII. A team led by Jens Vellev of theDept of Medieval and RenaissanceArchaeology at Århus University istrying to get permission from theCzech authorities to open the grave.The Prague City Museum, theNational Czech Museum and theParish Priest at Týn have all showninterest in the project.

Brahe died suddenly in 1601. Hisdeath is usually attributed to a rup-tured bladder. However, there havebeen various other suggestionsincluding, somewhat implausibly,that Johannes Kepler poisoned himin order to obtain access to hisobservations. Vellev hopes toresolve this question.

The team proposes to make CTscans of the skeletons and to checkfor signs of poisoning. They alsoplan to reconstruct copies of theclothes interred with the bodies fromthe surviving fragments. Finallythey hope to determine what Brahe’sprosthetic nose was made of (he lostmost of his nose in a duel when ayoung man).

If permission is granted it is hopedto begin the exhumation in late2009. The grave has been openedpreviously, on the three-hundredthanniversary of Brahe’s death in1901.

Further reading:

There is a brief report of the pro-posed excavation at:h t t p : / / j p . d k / u k n e w s / a r t i -cle1416326.ece

The Church of Our Lady in front ofTýn has a Wikipedia entry at:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Our_Lady_in_front_of_Tyn

Medieval Bulgariansundial foundA Medieval Bulgarian sundial hasbeen accidentally discovered. Itdates from the first BulgarianKingdom (usually taken to be AD

681-1018). Such finds are extremelyrare from this period. The report issketchy and its English translationidiosyncratic; the term ‘stone clock’

is used throughout, though presum-ably the device is a sundial.

The timepiece was found on one oftwo stone blocks lying near a Proto-Bulgarian fortress close to the vil-lage of Mogila in the Kaspichanmunicipality in north-easternBulgaria. The fortress was part ofthe defensive system for the thencapital Pliska. It has never been sys-tematically excavated, though the

The statue of Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) on the island of Hven in TheSound between Denmark and Sweden, where he made his most importantobservations. Brahe (right) is explaining some celestial phenomenon to

Lilly Hunter (left). (Photograph courtesy of Lena Zetterström).


late Prof. Rasho Rashev, untilrecently Director of theArchaeological Institute in Sofia,carried out an informal survey. Thesite has, however, suffered fromlooting.

The sundial is inscribed on oneface of one of the blocks. It compris-es a semicircle divided into tenequal parts and two smaller divi-sions at either end. Some Greek let-ters (α, β, γ, δ...) are visible on thebetter preserved portion. The central

axis is marked with a Medievalcross. The gnomon is missing. Thesecond block is inscribed with graf-fiti typical of the period: a group ofhorses with a central mounted figurecarrying a lance.

Further reading:

The English version of the report isavailable on numerous sites on theWeb, but the original, by StefanNikolov, is at http://international.ibox.bg/news/id_1858110710.

Didn’t they see it coming?Finally, the Astrological Magazine,founded in 1936, ceased publicationin December 2007.The reason given was‘unforeseen circum-stances beyond ourcontrol’ (ForteanTimes, 237, 2008, p9;see also http://www.astrological-magazine.com/).

Left: the sundial found in the remains of the Medieval fortress near the village of Mogila in Bulgaria. It is restingupside down. Right: part of the fortress where the sundial was found.

Though not strictly astronomicalthis photograph might be of inter-est. It shows the Pyramids ofDashur as recently photographedfrom the International SpaceStation. The pyramids are abouttwenty five miles south of Cairoand take their name from theneighbouring village. Top left isthe Red Pyramid and bottom rightthe Bent Pyramid. Both were builtby Snofru or Sneferu, first Pharaohof the Fourth Dynasty (2613-2494BC) in the Old Kingdom. The BentPyramid is so-called because theslope of each face changes partway up the pyramid and the RedPyramid is named after the reddishlimestone used in its core.

The Pyramids of Dashur from orbit

(Courtesy NASA, photograph ISS017-E-008285, 30 May 2008, see: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=28902)

THE first SHA event of 2008 wasa joint meeting with the North

West Group of AstronomicalSocieties held on 29 March 2008.The venue was the historicChetham’s Library in centralManchester, one of the oldest lend-ing libraries in Europe. The theme ofthe meeting was the history ofastronomy in the northwest.Speakers from Leeds, Liverpool andChester Astronomical Societieswere invited, together with represen-tatives from the historically impor-tant observatories at Stonyhurst andJodrell Bank. The meeting was heldin the sixteenth century BaronialHall at the Library. We were able tomeet in the Library thanks to thegood offices of its Librarian, DrMichael Powell.


Joint Conference at Chetham’s LibraryKevin Kilburn

Chetham’s Library in central Manchester.

The speakers and organisers of the meeting at Chetham’s Library. From left to right: Tony Cross, Kevin Kilburn,Gerard Gilligan, Fintan O’Reilly (at the back), Gilbert Satterthwaite, Sir Francis Graham-Smith,

Richard Sargent, Ray Emery and Murad Ghorbal.

The conference opened at 10:00amwith Dr Powell welcoming dele-gates to the Library. He had put outa display of original works byNewton, Galileo and Copernicusand the rare copy of the Bevis atlas,owned by Manchester AstronomicalSociety. SHA Chairman GilbertSatterthwaite then took the chair.After his introduction and thanks toDr Powell, he gave apologies forabsence from two SHA stalwarts,Stuart Williams and Ken Goward.Gilbert then introduced the firstspeaker, Murad Ghorbal ofLiverpool Astronomical Society,whose talk was entitled VariedAspects of the Orbit of Venus.

The transit of Venus held impor-tance in the northwest not only fromthe original observations of Horroxand Crabtree in 1639, but also fromthe nineteenth century observationsof Fr Stephen Perry of StonyhurstObservatory, who travelled toKerguelen Island in the southernIndian Ocean to make measure-ments of the solar parallax duringthe 1874 transit.

The phases of Venus were impor-tant to both Galileo and Kepler ininterpreting a Sun-centred planetary

system. The speaker queried whyKepler had not predicted the transitof 1639, considering his predictionfor 1631. Ghorbal had consultedBelgian mathematician Jean Meeus,who thought that Kepler was awareof long term periodicity of Venustransits but had not considered thepossibility of an interim short termeight year transit event. The transitof 1631 was visible in Asia but notin most of Europe. Although part ofthe transit might have been visiblealong a line from Danzig to Rome,and close to the north pole of theSun, it was not observed. It thereforesaid a lot for the genius of Horroxthat even without this informationhe was able to predict the transit ofNovember 1639.

In the eighteenth century, JosephNicolas Delisle attempted to clarifythe Sun-Venus-Earth transit geome-try, taking into account the spin rateof the Earth. In so doing he conflict-ed with Halley’s method of observa-tion and analysis.

In 1874 the optimal observingposition of the Venus transit wasKerguelen Island. Fr Stephen Perry,later president of Liverpool AS, ledthe British expedition on the ship

Volage to observe the transit. He setup three observing stations to max-imise the possibility of seeing theevent. American and German expe-ditions also established stations onthe island. Observing conditionswere not good but the efforts ofthese groups helped establish thesolar parallax and hence refined theEarth-Sun distance.

The second speaker was GerardGilligan, SHA member and memberof Liverpool AS whose talk wascalled William Lassell: Telescopes,Planets and Drinking Beer.

Lassell’s grandfather and greatgrandfather were Liverpool clock-makers and are buried within thegrounds of the ancient chapel ofCroxteth where it is thoughtJeremiah Horrox is also interred.William was born in Bolton,Lancashire, in June 1799, where hisfather, Nathaniel, was a timber mer-chant. He was educated in Boltonand then at Rochdale Academy.When his father died in 1810 thefamily moved back to Liverpool.From an early age, William had aninterest in science, perhaps inheritedfrom his grandfather, and by 1815 hehad begun to attend scientific lec-tures.

By 1824 he had established hisown brewing business. Liverpoolthen had over 600 breweries and aready market in the thirsty workmenbuilding the rapidly expandingdocks complex along the riverMersey. Brewers actually broughtbeer to the building sites and work-ers were allowed up to fifteen pints aday! As the importance of Liverpoolgrew as a port, so brewing becameincreasingly lucrative.

William married Maria King in1827, meeting her through herbrothers, Alfred and Joseph King,both amateur astronomers. It isthought that in 1836 William wenton holiday with them to observe atotal solar eclipse.

Lassell’s first telescope was a 9-inch Newtonian, equatorially


Jeremiah Horrox making the first observation of a transit of Venus in1639. This painting is by J.W. Lavender (1903) and is now in the AstleyHall Museum and Art Gallery, Chorley, Lancashire (image courtesy of

Wikimedia Commons).

mounted, erected in the garden ofhis Liverpool home, ‘Starfield’, in1841. His second great telescopewas a 24-inch reflector. Weather per-mitting, dinner guests were invitedto an observing session after theirmeal. Both telescopes, and a smalltransit instrument, were housed infine observatory domes at the bot-tom of his garden.

Learning from the Earl of Rosseand his other friends, William RutterDawes and Manchester engineerJames Nasmyth, Lassell devisedmethods of grinding large speculummirrors using steam-poweredmachinery. His telescopes were thefirst large reflectors to be equatorial-ly mounted. The Liverpool Museumhas examples of the eyepieces he

used with the 24-inch reflector andthe original finder that was rescuedfrom destruction in America.

In 1846, using the 24-inchtelescope, he discovered Neptune’sprimary satellite, Triton, only a fewdays after the discovery of the plan-et itself at Berlin. He later noticedthat the planet had an ‘elongation’and thought it might be a ring butthis was traced to a distortion of thetelescope mirror.

By 1854 Lassell was a celebrity inscientific circles and was regularlyvisited by George Airy, the

Astronomer Royal, and other inter-nationally famous astronomers pass-ing through the port of Liverpool.Queen Victoria, staying at CroxtethHall as a guest of the Earl of Sefton,received Lassell and rose as heentered the room — an unheard ofgesture, and an indication of therespect he had attained.

In the 1850s Lassell removed tohis third home, ‘Bradstones’, fur-ther away from the grime and smokeof central Liverpool, in an areawhere other magnates in shippingand cotton had their mansions.There he built his third telescope, a48-inch, but as industrial pollutioncontinued to envelop Liverpool, andas he was now aged 65, he handedover the running of the brewery to

his eldest son, also calledWilliam, and in 1864moved to Ray Lodge atMaidenhead.

Lassell was in some com-petition with WilliamCrouch Bond, of the

Harvard Observatory, in makingobservations of Saturn. Bond hadthe advantage of clearer skies andlower latitude. Lassell overcamethese handicaps by taking the 24-inch to Malta, where he establishedan observatory. In the 1860s he alsoremoved the 48-inch telescope toMalta, mounting it in a skeleton tubeon a mechanically driven equatorialmounting. This mounting rotated tofollow the sky by a using tickingmechanism with a beat that alloweda workman to keep the object in thefield of view. The eyepiece wasaccessed from a tower that movedwith the instrument. It is now knownthat this telescope had two mainmirrors; the second was rediscov-ered in the 1970s and is now at theWhipple Museum, Cambridge.

From Malta, with the 24-inch and48-inch telescopes, Lassell studiedthe outer planets, his principal inter-est. With Dawes he had co-discov-ered Saturn’s crepe ring. With Bond,he co-discovered Hyperion, a satel-


Left: William Lassell (1799-1880).Below: William Lassell’s 48-inch telescope.

lite of Saturn, and he discoveredtwo moons of Uranus, Ariel andUmbriel. At Malta, Lassell’sobserving assistant and calculatorwas the German astronomer, AlbertMarth. Marth was allowed to usethe telescopes in Lassell’s absenceand independently catalogued over600 nebulae.

William Lassell was president ofthe Royal Astronomical Societybetween 1870 and 1872. Hisobserving books, actually his brew-ery record books used back to front,are preserved in the RAS Library.He died in 1880 and is buried in StLuke’s churchyard, Maidenhead.Until recently overgrown, his graveis now tended by members ofMaidenhead AS. He died a yearbefore the founding of LiverpoolAS in 1881 but had he lived longer,would no doubt have become asso-ciated with that Society.

A replica of Lassell’s 24-inchtelescope, constructed in the mid1990s, is currently in storage butGerard is campaigning to have it putin the new Liverpool Life Museum.

Following a short break for dele-gates to see the treasures in the read-ing room of Chetham’s Library, the

third speaker was Richard Sargentof Chester AS who talked about,Henry Prescott: Late SeventeenthCentury Sidewalk Astronomer.

Henry Prescott was born in June1649, in Up Holland, near Wigan,Lancashire. His family had support-ed the Royalist side in the Civil War.When the Royalist cause failed, thePrescott family fortunes declineddramatically. However, with thesupport of the second Earl of Derby,the family fortunes revived and in1677 Henry secured a post at theRegister Office in the Diocese ofChester.

Prescott kept a diary thatdescribed happenings in and aroundChester, including some astronomi-cal notes. A three-volume modernedition of the diary is now available,published by the Records Society ofLancashire and Cheshire. Prescott’sdiary is essentially completebetween 1704 and 1719 but is frag-mentary before that time. The actu-al diary is held by the CountyRecord Office.

Prescott was an intelligent man; heknew his Greek and Latin and readthe classics. He was an antiquarianand collected Roman coins andacquired a Roman altar found in

Chester. He had an office in ChesterCathedral and was encouraged bythe Deputy Registrar to obtain a lawdegree to further his career. He wentto Trinity College, Dublin. In 1686,the Deputy Registrar died andHenry was promoted. His dutiesinvolved legal work, the processingof wills and probate, the appoint-ment and retirement of clergy. Hereceived fees for that work and wasreasonably well off. His boss, theRegistrar, was Walter Pope who waslargely based in Epsom.Nevertheless, Prescott was stillobliged to pay Walter Pope for workthat he, as Deputy Registrar, had todo in Chester! Pope was alsoProfessor of Astronomy at OxfordUniversity.

Walter Pope was appointedRegistrar of the Diocese of Chesterby John Wilkins, Bishop of Chesterfrom 1668 to 1672. Wilkins was afounder member of the RoyalSociety, a scientist and clergyman.In addition to other books, he wasauthor, in 1638, of The Discovery ofa World in the Moon, in which hedescribed what the Moon might belike and discussed how it might bepossible to travel there.

Richard showed paintings ofChester in the early eighteenth cen-tury, showing the city walls, thecathedral, the river Dee with ships,and the castle. Horse racing isshown on the Roodee, a parklandarea below the castle which is nowthe site of Chester racecourse.

Much of Prescott’s work involvedmeetings with clients, often in ale-houses. He had an extraordinarycapacity for drink and recorded on15 June 1704 that he went to theFountain Inn with a Mr Woodward,Bailiff of Liverpool, to discuss busi-ness and ‘bringing the matter to acheerful close over seventeen pintsof claret’! His diary entry for thefollowing day read ‘… extremelyindisposed’! There are about 150drinking houses recorded in Henry’sdiary, and he knew them all. Hehappily admits in his diary that his


During the interval members view some of the rare books on display in thereading room of Chetham’s Library.


daily walk on the Roodee was pro-portional in length to the size of hishangover!

Prescott was not an astronomer buthe did record astronomical activitiesin his diary. On 26 January 1697 herecords, ‘indisposed today at dinner,after previous business’. Still worsefor wear he took an evening walk atMr Davis’s, ‘where we see the Moonthrough a telescope’. The observa-tion doesn’t seem to have enthusedPrescott, perhaps because he stillhad a hangover, but perhaps becauseit was full moon or the optics werepoor.

On 20 Feb 1706 and after fourpints at the Fountain Inn withfriends, he returned home and saw inthe northern sky what seems to havebeen the aurora borealis.

In 1711 Henry Prescott becameRegistrar to the Diocese of St Asaph

but stayed on in his higher paid jobat Chester. The Dean of St Asaphcathedral was William Stanley, alsoArchdeacon of London, Prebendaryof St Paul’s Cathedral and a Fellowof the Royal Society. In 1705,William Stanley wrote to RobertDavis (a friend of Prescott’s inChester) saying that he had taken atelescope to the top of St Paul’s toobserve the Moon but the winter airwas smoky and thick. He promisedto send the telescope to Davis.

On 22 April 1715, there was to bea total solar eclipse crossing theBritish Isles and the subject of muchadvanced publicity. EdmundHalley’s broadsheet was the mostpopular, showing the track andobservable events at different timesfrom various cities. (An originalcopy was displayed in the readingroom at Chetham’s.) Prescott went

to the Countess coffee house on theday of the eclipse, observing theeclipse reflected from pails of waterand through pinholes in paper. Heanticipated imminent totality, but atsix minutes after nine the sun startedto regain its brilliance and totaleclipse escaped Chester, which layjust outside the path of totality.

On 6 March, 1716, returning homewith his son from The Ship Inn, hesaw lights in the northern sky, sup-ported five days later by reports inthe London newspapers of observa-tions of the aurora borealis on thatsame Tuesday evening. What wasprobably an auroral storm wasreported nation-wide and later sum-marised by Halley. Only twenty-fivedays later Prescott reports that heand his son, taking a walk on theRoodee with Mr Thompson andlater, after partaking in a bottle eachof red and white [wine] at the homeof Alderman Bennet, they again sawlights in the north east between tenand eleven in the evening, cloudsmoving before them.

13 March 1717, Prescott is calledout by local people to see a haloaround the Moon and on 30 Marchafter taking a turn on the Roodeewith Mr Thompson and enjoying abottle of fine white French at thehome of Mr Mayer, he is againcalled out to see ‘coruscations’ oflight in the sky; yet another auroraldisplay. Exactly a year later he saw

Henry Prescott (1649-1719?)

Chester Cathedral, where Henry Prescott held several administrative posts.

the same phenomenon; aurorae arealso reported on 25 November 1718.

Although they were not thenknown to be associated with solaractivity, these auroral displaysoccurred at the end of the so-calledMaunder Minimum, a period fromabout 1645 when sunspot activitywas quiescent. By the early eigh-teenth century, sunspots were againbeing observed and Prescott’s auroraobservations coincide exactly withthe resumption of the solar cycle.

On 17 March 1719, while Prescottwas at the home of a friend, peopleon the street reported a bright lightcrossing the sky equal in brightnessto the Sun and lasting for about halfa minute. On 29 March, newspapersdescribed the same phenomenonseen from Exeter and Paris and itwas later said by Halley that the fire-ball was about 70 miles high andtravelling at 300 miles a minute.

Edmund Halley came to live inChester in 1696 for about two years.Isaac Newton had been appointed tooversee the restructuring of theRoyal Mint and appointed Halley asDeputy Controller at the ChesterMint. Richard was confident thatHalley must have met Prescott; theywere of like mind and moved in thesame social circles. Some evidence

came from Prescott’s diary, althoughit is fragmentary for that period, butin a note 10 January 1697, he says… later, in the evening ‘at the coffeehouse with Mr Davis and Mr Haly’.However, it is Halley’s own corre-spondence of 26 October 1696 to theRoyal Society that clinches it. Hedescribed meeting Prescott, whoshowed him several antiquities andthe Roman votive altar that hadcome into his possession in 1693.

While in Chester, Halley recordedseeing lunar eclipses and frequentmeetings with their mutual friendRobert Davis, also a noted antiquar-ian. The altar stone, dated to aboutAD 200, can be seen in Chester’sGrosvenor Museum.

The fireball of March 1719 is thelast astronomical note in Prescott’sdiary. On business in north Wales on9 June, Henry Prescott died atWrexham. He was buried at UpHolland.

After lunch, the next speaker wasRay Emery, of Leeds AS (LAS),whose subject was, Through Statusto the Stars: the Victorian middleclasses of Leeds and theirAstronomical Society.

Were it not for an old Victorianledger, what Ray called the LAS

scrapbook, the history of Leeds ASwould have been lost. It was rescuedwhen Leeds central library wasabout to throw it out. Which was theoldest local UK astronomical socie-ty really didn’t matter but Raythought it was the Dumfries andMaxwell Town AS, founded in 1835as part of the local literary and philo-sophical society. Literary and philo-sophical societies were the key tomany scientific societies. They werevery much middle-class institutions.

Out of their own pocket, the LeedsPhil. and Lit. built their magnificentlecture hall and museum in the cen-tre of Leeds. In September 1858,Queen Victoria and Prince Albertcame to Leeds to open the new townhall and knighted Peter Fairbairn,the Leeds industrialist and brother ofthe Manchester engineer Sir WilliamFairbairn. Sir Peter was a member ofLeeds Phil. and Lit. and was inter-ested in astronomy, as was his son,Andrew, who later became SirAndrew and mayor of Leeds. Hewas one of the first members of theastronomical society.

Only three weeks after it opened,the British Association for theAdvancement of Science held itsmeeting in Leeds town hall. Sir JohnHerschel was present. The Leeds AScame out of that meeting andbecame quickly established. By1861 they had an observatory andtelescope in Love Lane on NorthStreet. Sir John Herschel was one ofmany patrons and George Airy, theAstronomer Royal, was honorarypresident (on the proviso that hewouldn’t have to do anything).However they did try to enlist aswide a membership as possible bykeeping subscriptions to fourshillings a year. Ray then gave shortbiographies of some of the wealthyfounding members in the period1860-63. He regarded them as acaste, the same names repeatedlycropping up as members of othersocieties and also in medical, educa-tional and legal institutions.

However, by 1867 they couldn’t


Members of the audience enjoy an anecdote during the talks.


support the scientific status to whichthey aspired and they began to runout of money. They were not in the‘grand amateur’ league of Lasselland Nasmyth although they had asmall 3-inch refractor made by Rossof London, thanks to Sir JohnHerschel who monitored its con-struction. It was bought with moneyraised by LAS members and is stillowned by the Society.

But they could not attract workingclass members. Even four shillings ayear was too much to take out of atypical working wage. Not manycould afford to join a ‘toff’s’ society.

By the 1880’s the LAS was inabeyance but the Phil. and Lit. werestill attracting the likes of RichardProctor and Robert Ball to giveastronomical talks to a large audi-ence. In 1892 the Leeds AS wasreorganised; they never admitted ithad failed. Its new members were anechelon down from the originals butthere were enough of them to makethe Society work. They were doc-tors, salesmen, tradesmen and rail-way workers who could afford tobuy or make their own astronomicalequipment and make observationsthat interested them; these could beshared with other members and thenewly formed BAA.

They hoped that Leeds city would

find them a home in the newMechanics Institute where theymight have a meeting room andeven an observatory but this was notto be. They did not get a permanenthome, but they were determined tomake the best of things and look the‘scientific part’ by publishing a reg-ular journal, at great expense, oftheir members’ work and sent obser-vations to the BAA and RAS.

Ray talked about some of theirmembers at the turn of the century.Ellison Hawkes produced astrono-my books and Scriven Bolton was

The 3-inch refractor made for theLeeds Astronomical Society by

Ross of London under thesupervision of Sir John Herschel.

A card advertising a series of talks to be given by Leeds AstronomicalSociety at their Observatory in Love Lane during 1861. Notice that the

first patron listed is Lord Wrottesley (see p30).


one of the first astronomical artists.In the early 1900s the LAS becameassociated with Leeds Universityuntil expelled in the 1960’s.Nevertheless, Leeds AS is soon tocelebrate its one hundred and fiftiethanniversary and looks forward to anactive future.

In the northwest, anyone who had aninterest in observing the Sun wouldhave heard of Stonyhurst Collegeand Fintan O’Reilly, Director ofStonyhurst College AS. Fintan wasinvited to speak on StonyhurstObservatory: Geomagnetism andthe Sun.

Stonyhurst mansion was built in1592 by the Shireburn family on thesite of a previous country house. In1794 it became a Jesuit school. In1838 a purpose-built observatorywas constructed as a weather obser-vatory with a small astronomicaldepartment housing a 4-inch refrac-tor in a cupola dome and transit tel-escopes in the two transepts. FrAlfred Weld was its first Directorduring two sessions, doing otherwork in between.

In 1848 Fr Angelo Secchi came toStonyhurst to avoid troubles inRome. After a few months he wentto Georgetown in the USA beforereturning to Rome as director of theCollegio de Romano Observatory, aprecursor of the VaticanObservatory. He was perhaps thegreatest of the nineteenth centuryJesuit astronomers and was one ofthe first to classify stars by theircolour.

James Glaisher, Superint-endent ofthe Department of Meteorology andMagnetism at Greenwich, was sentby Airy to Stonyhurst and it becameone of a network of UK weather sta-tions. Later Sir Edward Sabine per-suaded Stonyhurst to take up theobservation of terrestrial magnet-ism.

In the later nineteenth centuryStonyhurst became a more profes-sional station. After Fr Weld movedon to other work the observatoryA rear view of the Observatory at Stonyhurst College.

Stonyhurst College in Lancashire.

was run by three great overlappingDirectors; Fr Stephen Perry, FrWalter Sidgreaves and Fr AloysiusCortie, taking turns in charge aseach in turn left and then returned tothe college after undertaking otherduties.

During 1863-68 the collegeacquired an 8-inch refractor andbuilt a larger domed observatory.The objective was by Troughton andSimms (tested by Airy and pro-nounced second-rate), and the equa-torial mounting was by Carey. By1868 a magnetic observatory hadbeen installed under the originalobservatory and equipped to takeregular readings of terrestrial mag-netism as it varied in its diurnal andlonger-term cycles. A wooden hut,above ground and well removedfrom any local magnetic fields, wasused for a rigourous monthly deter-mination of magnetic declinationand dip. In 1874 Fr Perry was elect-ed a Fellow of the Royal Society, anunusual honour for a Catholic priestin Victorian times. This accoladewas for his work with Fr Sidgreavesin making magnetic surveys ofFrance and Belgium.

Fr Perry became interested in theSun and led UK expeditions to viewsolar eclipses on four occasions:1870, 1886 to the West Indies, 1887in Russia and tragically in 1889 toFrench Guiana, South America,where he caught dysentery and diedonboard HMS Comus.

Transits of Venus were alsoobserved by Perry and Sidgreaves,in 1874 from Kerguelen Island andin 1882 from Madagascar. It wasknown that Venus was 0.76 the dis-tance of Earth from the Sun butabsolute distances were not known.Transits afforded the possibility ofmeasuring the solar parallax andhence the distance.

The link between sunspots andgeomagnetism was suspected butthe mechanism was unknown. In1881 Fr Perry started a programmeof observing sunspots and a graphi-cal method of determining sunspot

co-ordinates was devised. Until1958 ‘Stonyhurst discs’ were used atthe observatory to calibrate solardrawings made whenever the weath-er permitted. Plotting the Earth’smagnetic variation against the 11-year sunspot cycle showed somecorrelation but geomagnetic stormsand their correlation with auroraewas not understood.

In 1893, the 8-inch telescope wasconverted to a 15-inch in memory ofFr Perry. The same mounting wasretained but the tube was altered toaccommodate a bigger lens made byGrubb that was optically superior tothe original 8-inch objective.

Fr Sidgreaves died in 1919, at theage of about 79, and Fr Cortie tookover as director. He was the authorof many scientific papers. Initiallyunconvinced of a correlationbetween sunspot activity and geo-magnetic activity, he later showedthat if terrestrial magnetic fluctua-tions were plotted against a twentyseven day period, they correlatedwith the Sun’s rotation.

Fr Cortie died in 1925 and FrO’Connor took over. He immediate-ly started preparations for the totalsolar eclipse of 1927, whose central

track passed directly acrossStonyhurst. A temporary solartelescope was prepared and accom-modation arranged for visitinggroups bringing their own instru-ments. Nothing was seen! Totalitylasted only thirty one seconds and asmall cloud obscured the Sun at thecritical time. The boys in the cricketground saw it, the boys in the play-ground saw it, but the astronomerswere clouded out!

Fr James Rowland took over in1932 when Fr O’Connor took anoth-er post. Fr Rowland was Directoruntil his retirement in 1947 but hewas more interested in meteorologythan astronomy. By then GeorgeEllery Hale at Pasadena had invent-ed the spectrohelioscope and spec-troheliograph and the Mt WilsonObservatory could routinely observethe Sun in great detail.Correspondence exists betweenStonyhurst and Hale. But Stonyhurstdid not have the new technology andafter World War II it was decided toclose down as an active solar obser-vatory. The Stonyhurst archives arenow in the University Library,Cambridge.

Note: Fr Perry was President of


Station E at Christmas Harbour, Kerguelen Island. The station was one ofseveral established on the island during the Transit of Venus expeditions of

1874. Several observing sheds are visible. One of the labels attached tothe negative reads ‘Nov 12th 1874. S. J. P.’, so the photograph was

probably taken by Fr Perry.


Liverpool AS. Frs Sidgreaves,Cortie and Rowland were Presidentsof the Northwest Branch of the BAAfrom 1892 and Manchester AS from1903 onwards until 1947.

After the afternoon tea-break and afinal visit to the reading room,(interrupted by a false fire alarmduring which the delegates wereobliged to evacuate the building intothe Manchester rain), the Chairmanwas delighted to welcome SirFrancis Graham-Smith, thirteenthAstronomer Royal and former direc-tor of Jodrell Bank Observatory, to

present his talk on the History of UKRadio Astronomy at Cambridge andJodrell Bank.

Radio astronomy could be tracedback to the pioneering work of KarlJansky, an American radio engineerat the Bell Laboratories who in theearly 1930s had the job of investi-gating radio interference and limita-tions of long distance radio commu-nication at a wavelength of about20m. He constructed a steerableantenna and found background radionoise that came predominantly fromthe Milky Way. Another Americanradio engineer, Grote Reber, built a

steerable dish antenna in his back-yard to map the radio sky at shorterwavelengths and confirmed Jansky’sfindings. Surprisingly, radio astron-omy did not develop any further inAmerica for many years.

Radio astronomy in Europe beganin 1945, when physicists who hadbeen immersed in wartime radio andradar work turned to more peacefulpursuits. Their research was inspiredby discoveries made during the war:radio emission from the Sun, echoesfrom meteor trails, and the back-ground radio emission from theMilky Way. Britain was the leader.

Work in France was led by d’YvesRocard who established the Nancyradio observatory using two 7.5m,Wurzburg ex-German coastaldefence radar dishes mounted onrails and set up as an interferometer.In Hungary, where the Tungsramvalve factory had been the base forradar development, Zoltán Bayobtained Moon echoes in 1946, atabout the same time as the USSignal Corps.

During the war, O. Hachenbergwas involved in German radar workat Telefunken, investigating radarequipment from crashed British air-craft. In 1970, Hachenberg metBernard Lovell, who described hispart in equipping Lancasterpathfinder aircraft. In 1942 one wasshot down near Rotterdam andLovell had often wondered who wasgiven the job of examining the newradar, complete with magnetron.Hachenberg replied, ‘I was’! Hebuilt the 100m Bonn radio telescopeat Effelsburg in the 1960s

In Sweden, Olof Rydberg foundedthe Onsala Observatory in 1949.Five of the German Wurzburg dish-es were set up for radio research andwere all in operation by 1955. InRussia there had been a vigourousobservational programme since1947, when an eclipse expedition toBrazil was mounted on board theship Griboyedov.

In Holland, Jan Oort was interest-ed in the structure of the Galaxy and

The 218ft diameter parabolic reflector at Jodrell Bank. This telescopemade the first identification of an extragalactic radio source, the

Andromeda Nebula.


had read Grote Reber’s papers. Heset H. van de Hulst to find a radiospectral line which would give adynamic structure to the otherwisefeatureless background radiation;the result was the 21cm line of neu-tral hydrogen which became theprime interest of the Dwingelooradio telescope. This work was thestart of the integration of all branch-es of astronomy that has been char-acteristic of Dutch astronomy to thepresent day.

Australia provided the closest par-allel to the development of radioastronomy in the UK. TheRadiophysics Laboratory, underJoseph Pawsey, developed metrewavelength radar and, unlike TRE(the Telecommunications ResearchEstablishment, and centre for radardevelopment) in the UK, continuedafter the war to investigate solar andGalactic radio emission. SydneyUniversity also became a centre forradio astronomy.

In the UK the development ofradar started in 1935 with a desper-ate need to detect enemy aircraft. Itonly took four years from a firstdemonstration of an echo to theinstallation of the complete CH(Chain Home) coastal radar system.The system operated at around 10mand the equipment was heavy andbulky. Airborne radar using 1.5mwavelength was first tested in 1937and operational by 1939. It wasdeveloped by E.G. Bowen, to whomwe later owe the Parkes RadioTelescope in Australia, and HanburyBrown, whose intensity interferom-eter was developed at Jodrell Bank.

Radio astronomy in the UK wasled by Hey, Ryle and Lovell. JamesHey’s discovery of sunspot radia-tion, meteor echoes and the discreteradio source Cygnus A was inspira-tional. He was a schoolmaster,recruited in 1940 into the ArmyOperational Research Group. Hecontinued in radio astronomy afterthe war, developing accurate posi-tion finding using interferometers.One of his radio telescopes, at

Defford, is still in use in the MER-LIN network.

Bernard Lovell was recruited fromManchester University to TRE andwas introduced to CH radar in 1939,later moving to airborne radar wherehe worked on the development ofsteerable antennae. He later tookcharge of the whole 10cm naviga-tional radar system, known as H2S,installed in Lancaster and Halifaxbombers. Martin Ryle also started in1939, with J.A. Ratcliffe inCambridge, by investigating metrewavelength antennae for airborneradar. Installed in aircraft such as theBeaufighter, finding and intercep-tion used a pair of antennae, one ineach wing. Ryle’s first radio astron-omy interferometers were built atGrange Road, Cambridge, starting a

line of development leading to theinvention of aperture synthesis.

Lovell had worked on cosmic rayresearch with P.M.S. Blackett and hespeculated that sporadic radarechoes might be from atmosphericionisation created by cosmic rayshowers. On his return toManchester he used a transportablearmy radar, provided by Hay, at theUniversity’s Department of Botany(to avoid electrical interference fromManchester’s trams), at JodrellBank. However Lovell soon showedthat the echoes were coming fromionised meteor trails. Lovell’s firstJodrell Bank paper given to theRAS, with the assistance of BAAmeteor expert, J.P. ManningPrentice, was on the radar observa-tion of daytime meteor showers.

Grote Reber’s steerable dish antenna with which he mappedthe radio sky at 1.9 m.


Lovell then built a 218ft diameter,upward-looking, parabolic reflectorfor increased sensitivity in thesearch for cosmic ray showers, butnone were detected. (Radio emissionfrom a cosmic ray shower was even-tually discovered at Jodrell Bank byJohn Jelly and Graham Smith.)Hanbury Brown joined Lovell in1949, with a new student, CyrilHazard, and the 218ft paraboloid,used as a receiver, became the firstradio telescope to identify an extra-galactic radio source, theAndromeda Nebula. The 218ftparaboloid was superseded by the250ft fully steerable dish, the Mk1,that became operational in 1957 andfollowing upgrades in performancebecame the Mk 1A and is now calledthe Lovell Telescope.

The Lovell Telescope was out-standingly useful in mapping thedistribution of radio emission overthe sky, but it lacked the angular res-olution needed to resolve the sizeand shape of discrete radio sources.In optical astronomy Michelson hadshown how an interferometer couldbe used to provide high angular res-olution, and Hanbury Brown andRyle had demonstrated the sametechnique in the radio spectrum.Eventually, long baseline interfer-

ometry networks were developed asthe forerunners of the aperture syn-thesis arrays, MERLIN and eVLBI,which join radio telescopes in theUK, Europe and elsewhere as themost important tool of observationalradio astronomy today. As an exam-ple, the so-called point sources,which were identified as quasars, arenow mapped in greater detail thanby the best optical telescopes.

The Chairman thanked Sir Francisfor bringing the day to a splendidconclusion. He thanked the dele-gates and lecturers for their presen-tations, and Dr Powell for enablingthe SHA to meet in this beautifullocation and for showing us some ofits fascinating history. We were mostgrateful. The assistance of TonyCross; Michael Oates’ audio record-ing and David Shakeshaft’s manage-ment of the computer and digitalprojector on behalf of the speakerswas also acknowledged. We wouldalso like to add my own thanks to SirFrancis Graham-Smith for providingus with written notes for his lecturethat were invaluable in doing theprécis of his talk. We are also grate-ful to Ray Emery and RichardSargent for providing copies ofsome of the illustrations used intheir talks.

Further reading:

Chetham’s Library has a Web site at:http://www.chethams.org.uk/

Mike Oates has some pages aboutWilliam Lassell at: http://www.mikeoates.org/lassell/

A three-volume set of HenryPrescott’s diaries has been publishedby the Records Society ofLancashire and Cheshire as vols.127, 132 and 133 in their series. See:http://www.gmcro.co.uk/guides/record_society/record_society.htm

The Leeds Astronomical SocietyWeb site includes a page about itshistory. See: http://homepage.ntl-w o r l d . c o m / x a v i e r v / L e e d s A S /History.html.

The home page for StonyhurstCollege is http://www.stonyhurst.ac.uk/. The College also has aWikipedia entry at:h t t p : / / e n . w i k i p e d i a . o r g / w i k i /Stonyhurst_College.

There is some material on the earlyhistory of radio astronomy at:http://www.nrao.edu/index.php/learn/ radioastronomy/radioastronomy-history.

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THIS year’s annual picnic washeld on 2 August in the grounds

of Marlborough College, Wiltshire,courtesy of SHA member CharlieBarclay. Charlie is Head of Physicsand Director of the restored BlackettObservatory at the College. Sixteenpeople — SHA members and theirfamilies and friends — were presentfor the occasion.

The day had started inauspiciously,with heavy rain in the morning.However, by the time guests assem-bled at 1 pm the skies had cleared andthe Sun shone brightly all afternoon.It had been planned for us to eat ourpicnic on the grass near theObservatory, but as it was so wetCharlie had found us some comfort-able (and dry) seating outside theEllis Theatre in the main Collegegrounds.

After our meal and before our tripto the Observatory, Charlie gave usspecial permission to climb theMarlborough Mound, a prehistoricearthen work within the Collegegrounds (the Mound is not open to

the general public). This Mound isthe first visual evidence of humanoccupation in the area, probably ofthe same age as the larger SilburyHill five miles to the west. It is thesecond largest and, according toCharlie the least visited, prehistoricmonument in Europe. It is shortly tobe restored by the removal of a nine-teenth century chimney and a watertank on the flattened top. From it, wehad a good view of Marlborough andthe surrounding countryside, includ-ing a miniature white horse chalkedinto the hillside.

We then drove in convoy to theObservatory, a short distance away.This was reached via a hill with adja-cent school playing fields.

The Blackett Observatory is situat-ed at 540 feet above sea level andenjoys clear aspects in all directions.The dome is substantial and very wellconstructed. It has been paintedgreen; the original natural finish cop-per had reflected the Sun and provedto be a nuisance. It was acquired bythe College in 1935 from a private

Observatory in Torquay but the nameof its previous owner is unknown. Ifany member can shed further light onthis individual please let us know.

The dome houses the BarclayEquatorial telescope, whose historyis outlined below. The first view ofthis instrument is breathtaking. It is athing of great beauty, with its gleam-ing brass tube and drive wheels. It isreckoned to be one of the best refrac-tors still in use in the UK and itsoptics are superb.

Its size is also impressive, with itsten inch diameter lens and twelvefoot focal length tube. Having shownus round, Charlie took us through thehistory of the telescope, from itsbeginnings in 1860 to its recentrestoration. It originally belonged toone of his ancestors, Joseph GurneyBarclay (1816-1898), though thiswas unknown to him when he beganthe restoration project in 1998. Madeby Thomas Cooke of York in 1860,the refractor was used by Barclay inLeyton, Essex, to observe and recorddouble stars; three volumes of his

SHA Summer PicnicMadeline Cox

The picnic party assembled in front of the Blackett Observatory dome.


published observations had beenthoughtfully put on show for us tolook at, courtesy of Peter Hingley,Librarian of the RAS. In 1885,Barclay gave the telescope to theRadcliffe Observatory in Oxford,which was badly in need of a goodtelescope to compete with the betterequipped observatory in Cambridge.The Radcliffe continued Barclay’swork on double stars and also on themotion of stars within clusters.

In 1935 the telescope was boughtby Marlborough College, who raised£800 to move the instrument andrehouse it in the present dome. It wasused by successive generations ofMarlburian pupils mainly for plane-tary observation, but also for solarwork. However, over time the motordrive had become damaged, anddespite in-house attempts to keep theinstrument going, it had largely falleninto disrepair and not being used toits full potential.

When Charlie was appointed Headof Physics in 1997, he took onresponsibility for the Observatoryand oversaw the restoration and mod-ernisation of the telescope. The proj-ect engineer was Mr Norman Walker,formerly of the Royal GreenwichObservatory. The restoration includ-ed stripping away layers of paint andreplacing the damaged motor driveand gear wheel teeth on the rightascension drive wheel. The tube wasalso damaged and additional holeshad been drilled at some time toattach a makeshift rig to hold a cam-era.

As part of the restoration, the rightascension drive wheel motor hasbeen replaced and a motorised decli-nation mechanism added to allowtotal computer control. The extraweight meant that the solid ironcounterweight had to be made lighterand it was consequently shortened.The computer control makes thisinstrument the oldest telescope with agoto facility. The brass eyepiece endwas modified to take Meade andCelestron equipment so that lenses, aphotographic filter assembly and aCCD could be attached. Solar and Hαfilters have also been installed, and

Above: The ten inch Cooke refractor in the Blackett Observatory.

Below: Members descend the Marlborough Mound.


Charlie gave us a demonstration byshowing us the (spotless) Sun usingthe solar filter at the eyepiece. Therestoration was completed in 2002and the telescope officially reopenedin October of that year.

The Observatory is well used byCollege pupils and members of thelocal community alike: public out-reach work is one of its key activities.Work undertaken by GCSE pupilswas on display in the adjacent work-room. There are plans to establishobserving links and a research pro-gramme with Oxford University. Thetelescope would then be used to itsfull potential.

After a fascinating tour of theObservatory and a group photograph,we returned to the main College site,where we were shown some slides ofthe Observatory renovation byCharlie in the Ellis Theatre. Theevent finished around 4:30 pm,allowing members to reflect on awonderful day out.

Our sincere thanks extend to theHeadmaster for allowing the picnic totake place on site, and to Charlie fororganising such a memorable day.For SHA members not able to attendon this occasion, I would heartily rec-ommend a visit at a future date if pos-sible.

Further reading:

Information about the telescope, itshistory and restoration may be foundat http://www.blackettobservatory.org

There is a short article about thetelescope in Astronomy Now,February 2003, pp75-76.

For a detailed history of thetelescope’s early use see TheAntiquarian Astronomer, 2006, 3,pp11-18.

For further information about theMarlborough Mound, seehttp://www.marlboroughcollege.org/col_college_history.aspx.

Some additional photographs areavailable at http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/2273.

Above: Charles Barclay outside the Blackett Observatory dome.

Below: Members enjoy lunch outside the Ellis Theatre.


The nocturnalLeonard Honey

OLD Humfric Cole was the firstEnglish-born instrument

maker of Elizabethan England andthe foremost practitioner of theLondon scientific instrument trade.26 of his instruments have survived,six of which are now in the BritishMuseum. One, device number 12 ofCole’s known pieces and signed byhim in circa 1570, is a combinednocturnal and tide predictor, and isthe inspiration for a modern repro-duction. This article gives aninsight into the remarkable careerand craftsmanship of HumphreyCole, as he is better known;describes the use of the nocturnal;and briefly explores the process ofremaking early scientific instru-ments.

Cole (circa 1530-1591) was activeat a time when England’s wealthwas greatly increasing and the needfor accurate measurement wasbeing felt. He was by no means anisolated figure, and a group of mak-ers appeared nearly simultaneouslyin late sixteenth-centuryElizabethan England. He is thoughtto have come from Yorkshire, andwas employed in the Royal Mint atThe Tower of London, in the officeof Sinker (die maker). This postallowed him to perfect his skills andemploy them on the instruments hemade, helping to make his nameand augment his income. Cole alsohad a number of commissions,

including a map for Richard Jugge(1547-1577), printer and publisherof Bibles, to illustrate the 1572 edi-tion of the Bishops’ Bible. Anotherprinting commission undertaken byCole came from Thomas Digges,who republished his fatherLeonard’s A Prognostication ofRight Good Effect, London, 1576,to which he added his own A PerfitDescription of the CaelestiallOrbes, the first discussion inEnglish of the Copernican worldsystem.

The heavens were no longerthought of as bounded by the sphereof the fixed stars. On the contrary,the stars stretched out to infinity. Adiagram to illustrate this novel view

was printed, and Humphrey Colehas been identified as its engraver.

He was also knowledgeable aboutmining and minerals and wasselected to supply and repair (aftereach trip) all the instruments for the‘Frobisher Voyages’, early attemptsto discover the Northwest passageto India and Cathay, China. Theseinstruments included: a great globeof metal, an armillary sphere (celes-tial globe), an early theodolite, auniversal dial, an astronomical dialto establish the time by the Sun’saltitude at particular latitude, and anastrolabe. He was paid £7/11/-.Further, Humphrey Cole’s devicescover the whole range of mathemat-ical instruments of the day; sundials

[The author designs, produces andmarkets a range of replica astro-nomical instruments (see hisaccompanying advertisement).This article describes one instru-ment in the range, a nocturnal, andoutlines the process of producing amodern replica. For an additionalillustration of a nocturnal seeNewsletter 12, November 2006, p9.— Ed.]

This diagram is the first English representation of the Copernican worldsystem. The Engraving is attributed to Humphrey Cole, published in 1576

in Thomas Digges’s A Perfit Description of the Celestiall Orbes.


and nocturnals for telling the timeby day and night; astrolabes; and a‘universal instrument’ for the samepurpose, and additionally for meas-uring the positions of heavenly bod-ies.

About the nocturnalHorologium noctis is the Latinname of the instrument known inEnglish as a nocturlabe, or noctur-nal. From the moment of sunset,sundials are of no use, and for along time man depended on stellarobservation to tell the time by night.It was known that certain borealconstellations rotated around thePole Star about once per day, as if agiant clock hand were keeping timearound the celestial sphere.Observers began to record the posi-tions of the most significant starsvisible to the northern hemisphereat different times during the nightand over the course of the seasons.The origin of the nocturnal astro-labe, however, is unclear. One leg-end says that Raimund Lull invent-ed the nocturnal to administer dosesof medicine to patients during thenight. This concept gave birth to thenocturnal as we now know it, theinstrument first appearing at thebeginning of the sixteenth century.It began to disappear in the eigh-teenth century, coincident with theproliferation of accurate mechani-cal clocks and watches.

Whilst the astrolabe can be usedto determine the solar hour at nightdirectly using any star found in thefirmament, the nocturnal, beingsimpler, can only be used on thosestars that are circumpolar. A starmeets this requirement when itsdeclination (height above the equa-tor) is greater than its co-latitude. Inthe sixteenth century, navigatorsfrom the Mediterranean area chosecircumpolar stars by which to tellthe time. In Mediterranean latitudesthree stars meet this test: Kochab βof Ursa Minor, also known as theLittle Bear or Little Dipper; Dubhe

of the constellation Ursa Major; andShedir of Cassiopeia.

When Kochab β is used, the a starof the same constellation is the PoleStar (the one to be sighted throughthe central aperture of the instru-ment). Kochab β is preferredbecause of its very high declination,+74° 09’, which allows it to be usedin latitudes as low as the Canaries,28° 06’N, a fundamental concernfor seafarers. At this parallel theother two stars, because of theirlower declinations, cannot be used.

There are versions of the noctur-nal that use two or all three of themajor stars, but Cole designed theone discussed here (see the photo-graphs) only for Kochab β. As it isvisible from so much of theNorthern hemisphere, the absenceof indicators for other stars is nogreat disadvantage. The operation isvery simple. The main plate, some-times called the mater, or mother, ismarked with the months and datesof a full year, and often with a zodi-ac scale too. Each of the twelvezodiacal constellations represents30º of the ecliptic, and it is general-ly a very efficient co-ordinate sys-tem. On the edge is a handle, whichin this case is meant to be openedvertically downwards.

Concentric with the main plate isanother, smaller, disc, pivoted upona pierced rivet. The disc is marked1-12 twice along its edge. Thehours, and often the half-hours, aremarked with prominent teeth, sothat the operator could feel the timeat night. A further vital feature is theindex, marked in this case by fleurs-de-lis. On more complex instru-ments, more indices are provided,inscribed with the names of thestars they are designed to measure.

Also pivoted at the centre is amovable straight index, the alidade,the key edge of which lines up withthe centre of the instrument. Thealidade must, of course, protrudewell beyond the edge of the maindisc. In use, the observer chooses

which star he wishes to sight, andsets the appropriate index on theinner disc to correspond with thecurrent date (in the case of Cole’snocturnal there is only one, as stat-ed before, for Kochab β). Theinstrument is held up by the handle,and, while sighting the Pole Star

Above: The obverse face of areplica of Humphrey Cole’s

nocturnal. The description in thetext pertaining to the use of thenocturnal neatly relates to this

instrument.

Below: The reverse face of Cole’snocturnal, showing the basic tidepredictor, which, when combinedwith a table of ‘Establishments of

Port’ will read with reasonableaccuracy.


throughits centre,the alidadeis swunground tointersect withthe chosen star.The time is thenread off the smallerdisc. Such an instru-ment can be used in any lat-itude, and remains operationallyaccurate for many years, as the vari-ation in direct ascension varies verylittle over the centuries.

About the tide computerThe reverse of Cole’s nocturnal is adevice used to determine the time ofhigh tide, based on the age of theMoon. The main plate has threezones. The outer is divided into360º in 1º intervals, the middle intotwice 12 hours, and the inner into32 compass directions. Within thisis a volvelle, or rotating ring, with asmall pointer, and divided into 30days. This is meant to represent theage of the Moon, but as the lunarcycle is markedly different to this,the limited usefulness of the instru-ment becomes apparent. When con-sidered in conjunction with a time-keeper that displays the time in‘quantum leaps’ of about half anhour, we can begin to appreciate theproblems facing navigators in the

lateMiddle

Ages. Thecentre of the

device has a lunarvolvelle, with anaperture to visual-

ly represent theMoon’s age, and a

large pointer, and isengraved with symbols represent-ing the four quarters of the age ofthe Moon.

The tides, with their constantlychanging levels, greatly affect navi-gation due to the energy generatedby the immense quantity of water inmotion, and its effect on submarinecurrents. Moon and Sun both exertgravitational attraction over wateron Earth, the Moon’s effect beingmore obvious because of its prox-imity to the Earth. The change ofthe water level is produced aboutevery 6 hours, so that in one day thewater level will rise twice and falltwice. Although, astronomically,the high and low tides are related to

the position of the Moon, there is infact a difference between the timethat the Moon passes over a givenplace on the Earth and the rise andfall of the water level at that place;this difference in time is called the‘establishment of the port’ and isdefined as the interval between thepassage of the Moon and the high

tide over the local meridian.Spring tides, happening at thefull Moon and new Moon, pro-duce the greatest range in

height between high andlow water; this is becauseof the syzygy, where the

Moon, Sun and Earth arealigned in space. At neap

tides, in the first quarter andlast quarter of the Moon, and

the Sun form a right angle withthe Earth, the attraction of the

Moon is partly counteracted bythat of the Sun, and the differencebetween high and low tide is at itsleast. It is therefore clear that aknowledge of the Moon’s age isvital to mariners, especially thoseactive in Humphrey Cole’s era.

A critical point with the use of atide predictor such as this is that itcan only determine the time of thepassage of the Moon over a certainpoint. In order to discover the actu-al time of high tide, a separate chartrecording the ‘establishment of theport’ must be consulted, in much thesame way that the equation of timemust be known before a sundial canbe put to good use.

The production of a replicascientific instrumentThe primary technical considera-tion is, of course, to make theinstruments work as they were orig-inally intended. Once it has beendecided which instrument is likelyto be of commercial interest, and tocapture the imagination, the engi-neering process can begin.Engineers, mathematicians andastronomers have all been

A simplified diagram of a traditional nocturnal. We see only one set ofsymmetrical indices on the hour volvelle, so the instrument is designedfor the observation of only one star,which from the position of thehandle, near ‘November’, weknow to be Kochab β.

employed to perform the requiredcalculations, in order, for example,to ensure that a given instrumentwill work at a certain new latitude.The skills of graphic designers,illustrators and model makers arealso harnessed to ensure that thefinal models we make represent thepiece accurately.

Sometimes an item is available tobe examined, in which case photosor drawings can be obtained. In thecase of the Humphrey Cole instru-ment described here, plans werebased on pictures from a book.Missing or unclear parts require fur-ther research and comparison withsimilar items, extrapolating theinformation where necessary so thata working instrument can be made.

In nearly every case it is impossi-ble to effectively make the repro-duction instrument in the originalmaterial. These early devices weremade of brass, copper, and bronze,and would be prohibitively expen-sive to cast today: zinc and alumini-um alloys are used instead, withgold plating to improve the appear-ance. Such a reproduction takesconsiderable time, especially theresearch and the correction of errorsafter the prototypes are made.About six months mathematical andhistorical research is required,including finding and making draw-ings. Once all the techni-cal aspects are resolved,master plans are drawnin 3D using ‘AutoCAD’.Prototypes for the cast-ing process are thenmade, which takes up toa month. Then the sili-cone moulds are made,from which are pulledabout ten proofs. At thispoint, if anything needsto be corrected, thewhole month’s processcould be repeated. Onceall the details are settledand deemed to be cor-rect, the development of

the steel mould is begun, followedby an initial production run of 250pieces. For an instrument like anastrolabe the development processwill take a year’s enjoyable work! Itis no wonder that masters like Colewithout access to CAD, silicone ormodern production techniques wereso highly regarded.

A previous version of this articleappeared as ‘The Nocturnal andother early Scientific Instruments’in the Horological Journal,December 2006. pp457-459, editedby Justin Koullapis. It is reproducedhere by kind permission.

Further reading:

Silke Ackermann (ed), HumphreyCole: mint, measurement and mapsin Elizabethan England, BritishMuseum Occasional paper 126,(London: British Museum, 1998),pp15-19, ISBN 0-86159-126-7.

R.T. Gunther, ‘The Great Astrolabeand other Scientific Instruments ofHumphrey Cole’, Archaeologia, 76(1927), pp273-317.

Gerard L’E.Turner, Elizabethaninstrument makers. The origins of

the London trade inprecision instrumentmaking (OxfordUniversity Press, 2000).

F.E.B. Ward, A cata-logue of European sci-entific instruments inthe Department ofMedieval and LaterAntiquities of theBritish Museum(London: BritishMuseum Press, 1981)p74 f, no. 208.


The use of a nocturnal by Petrius Apian, Antwerp 1545. The drawing ofthis very simple nocturnal does not show the months circle.


Astronomy Research at the British LibraryMadeline Cox

IN September 2007, Ispent four days at the

British Library in Londonresearching the history ofastronomy inNottinghamshire. My aimwas to augment the mate-rial in our Survey ofAstronomical History(see p39), for which I amthe Nottinghamshire co-ordinator. My visit waspaid for by the BritishLibrary, the EastMidlands branch ofCILIP (the professionalorganisation for librari-ans) and Library andInformation EastMidlands. I thank themfor their generous fundingof my stay.

The catalogues of theBritish Library areextremely detailed, andfrom them I was able to locate anumber of relevant documents, bothprinted and in manuscript form.Below are some of the most relevantI consulted relating toNottinghamshire astronomy.

The first documents I inspectedwere a collection of letters fromEdward J. Lowe (1825-1900), anamateur astronomer and mete-orologist who lived inNottingham for mostof his life. Manyof the lettersc o n c e r n e dobservationsof the auroraborealis, ofwhich Lowewas one ofthe leadingobservers ofhis day. Thecorrespondenceincludes anexchange of infor-mation with James

Challis (1803-1882), Director of theCambridge Observatory, regardingan aurora of ‘remarkable splendour’which occurred on 3 December 1845and was visible over much of theUnited Kingdom. Challis remarksthat he was observing Biela’s cometat the time and the aurora, which had‘a remarkable arch’, actually made it

difficult to see the comet clearly.Another splendid auroral

display which Lowedescribes appeared

on 2 November1847, duringwhich manymeteors werealso seen. Itmust havemade for am e m o r a b l enight’s viewing.The most inter-

esting letter wasone of Lowe’s to the

British Association forthe Advancement of

Science regarding a ‘Blue Mist’ hehad seen several times overNottingham during the summer of1866. He described it as ‘like a faintbloom on a painting’ and wondered ifit was ‘a comet detained by theEarth’. The mist was visible acrossmuch of Britain and was alsoobserved by James Glaisher (1809-1903), the Superintendent of theMagnetical and MeteorologicalDepartment at the RoyalObservatory, Greenwich. Glaisherthought it might have some connec-tion with cholera but no one yetseems to have come up with a plausi-ble explanation for it.

Lowe was a friend of the Bathastronomer Henry Lawson (1774-1855), and the British Library holds acopy of the paper Lawson wrote in1844 describing his rooftop observa-tory there. It is beautifully illustrated,with several magnificent plates of hisown drawings. Many of Lawson’sinstruments were bequeathed toLowe on his death in 1855, and I amat present trying to find what becameof them.

Among the printed books I lookedat were several by Nottingham-bornastronomer John Russell Hind (1823-1895). In his Introduction toAstronomy, published in 1863, thereis an interesting comment about theSun, which is worth quoting:

Astronomers generally regard theSun as a habitable globe, probablypeopled by intelligent beingsthough of a differently organisedrace to ourselves. This appears farmore likely than that it should be avast orb of fire, as the ancients sup-posed, but, without doubt, erro-neously.

Which just goes to show thatastronomers don’t always get thingsright!

During the 1850s Hind becameembroiled in an episode involvingthe comet of 1556, or ‘The Comet of

The British Library in Kings Cross, London,adjacent to St Pancras Station.

Edward J. Lowe(1825-1900).


Charles V’, strict-ly C/1556 D1.There had beens u g g e s t i o n sstretching back tothe eighteenthcentury thatC/1556 D1 wasthe same object asan earlier comet,C/1264 N1. Thisputative periodiccomet was pre-dicted to return in1848, but did notreappear. A dis-pute developedbetween Hind,who continued tomaintain that thetwo comets werethe same object,and predicted a return in 1858 or1860, and Martinus Hoek who con-sidered the comets different objects.In the event, Hoek was correct, theywere different, neither was periodicand there was no return.

In a bizarre postscript to thisepisode a German astrologerannounced that C/1556 D1 would notmerely return, but would strike theEarth on 13 June 1857. This fabrica-tion was widely reported throughoutEurope and caused particular disqui-et in Paris. Hind wrote The Comet of1556 — also in the British Library —to allay these fears.

Hind tracked the path of minorplanet Astraea in 1846, the fifthasteroid ever to be discovered (by theGerman astronomer K.L. Hencke).His drawing of it in the BritishLibrary was at the back of a collec-tion of newspaper cuttings labelledSquibs on Bonaparte’s ThreatenedInvasion. How it came to be cata-logued there, heaven knows, and nei-ther did the Superintendent in theReading Room!

One fascinating bound manuscript Ifound was called Letters onAstronomy Presented to a Lady 1746,1747. According to the catalogueentry they were written by a WilliamMelmoth (1710-1799), but simply

addressed to ‘My Ladyship’ through-out. At first I imagined some roman-tic tryst but on closer reading Ideduced it was written on the instruc-tion of the Lady’s husband — I stillhave no idea who she was. Sciencefor ladies was very fashionable in theeighteenth century and I am guessingit was one husband’s attempt to edu-cate his wife so that she could holdher own in polite conversation in thedrawing room. Melmoth was a trans-lator of Latin texts and is not knownto have written anything else onastronomy.

Thomas Wright of Durham (1711-1786) was not only an astronomerbut a competent architect, and theBritish Library holds a copy of hisdrawings for Nuttall Temple, aNottinghamshire country housewhich was demolished in 1929.Other non-astronomical items oflocal interest that I consulted includ-ed correspondence between theReverend White Almond (1786-1853), Rector of St Peter’s Church inNottingham from 1819-1853, andCharles Babbage (1791-1871), theinventor of the principle of the ana-lytical engine, the forerunner of themodern electronic computer.Babbage evidently asked Almond toobtain some stocking-loom equip-

ment for his ‘addingmachine’, presumablyto examine its mecha-nism. The other major,non-astronomical workI consulted was a fabu-lous collection of penand ink drawings ofN o t t i n g h a m s h i r echurches, made by theartist SamuelHieronymous Grimm(1733-94) and datingfrom the 1770s.

Although my stay inLondon was paid for,anyone can, in fact,apply for a BritishLibrary Reading roomcard, and I would urgeany member of theSHA undertaking

research to do so. It is well worth thevisit and can add significant informa-tion to our Survey of AstronomicalHistory. Further details may be foundon the British Library Web site athttp://www.bl.uk.

Further reading:

Some further details of EdwardLowe, Henry Lawson and JohnRussell Hind can be found in two ofmy papers in The AntiquarianAstronomer: 1 (2004), pp6-10 and 4(2008), pp23-34.

There is a brief description of the‘blue mist’ on The Gallery of NaturalPhenomena Web site, http://www.phenomena.org.uk/. After enteringthe site follow the links ‘Full con-tents’ and then ‘MIASMA’.

There is a brief description of thescare caused by the predicted 1857return of C/1556 D1 in DonaldYeomans’ Comets: a ChronologicalHistory of Observations, Myth andFolklore (1991, Wiley: New York),pp186-87.

Thomas Wright’s Nuttall Temple isbriefly described at http://www.nottshistory.org.uk/Jacks1881/nuttalltem-ple.htm

Henry Lawson’s rooftop observatory in Bath (courtesy ofPeter Hingley and the Royal Astronomical Society).


Astronomical Weddings at Pendrell HallJohn Armitage

WOULD you like an astronomi-cal wedding with strong his-

torical connections? If this prospectappeals to you, then I can report thatPendrell Hall, home of the PendrellHall Observatories (see Newsletters16, July 2008, 10, March 2006,pp12-14 and passim), is nowlicensed to conduct weddings. So, itis possible to be married at an obser-vatory site!

Wedding photographs could betaken at the side of vintage tele-scopes, including the recentlyrestored Calver reflector that oncebelonged to the Revd T.E.R. Phillips(President of the RAS 1927-29,President of the BAA 1914-16,Director of the BAA Jupiter Section

1901-34 andDirector of theSaturn Section1934-39). In theevening of thewedding ceremo-ny a star-partycould be organ-ised, weather per-mitting. Even ifthe weather is notfavourable toursof the observato-ries with demon-strations of theirequipment couldbe arranged, andvarious othera s t r o n o m i c a ltreasures heldonsite, including acopy of thefamous JohnBevis star atlas,made available forperusal by guests.

If a church wed-ding is preferredthen this is easy

to arrange as the little church of StPeter’s is only a short distance downthe road from Pendrell Hall, and thisalso has astronomical connections.Joseph Hough MA (1838-1924) isburied there and the church has astained-glass window dedicated tohim. Hough was the last custodianand observer at the observatorywhich Lord John Wrottesley, SecondBaron Wrottesley (1789-1867) builtwithin 1.5 miles of Pendrell Hall(see The Antiquarian Astronomer,2006, 3, pp5-10).

Pendrell Hall also has overnightaccommodation for guests (subjectto availability), so it is possible tooffer a total wedding package. Wehave already arranged one astro-nomical wedding and one astronom-ical birthday party, and we hope thatthese will not be the last.

If you are interested in these possi-bilities then contact John Armitageat Observatory House, 117,Hednesford Road, Cannock,Staffordshire, WS11 6LB (pleasetelephone 01543 579805) for furtherdetails.

Pendrell Hall, South Staffordshire, home of the PendrellHall Observatories and now available for weddings.

The restored Calver reflector which once belonged tothe Revd T.E.R. Phillips. The Victorian gentlemeninspecting the telescope are Mike Oates (left) and

Tony Cross (right).


VARIOUS collections of histori-cal texts have been digitised in

recent years and are now availableon-line. It is a commonplace thatsuch digital collections can provideeasy access to hitherto inaccessiblematerial and will change the waythat we do research.

One such collectionwhich has become avail-able relatively recently isthe Eighteenth CenturyCollections On-line(ECCO) published byThomson Gale. It is adigitised, on-lineresource comprising anextensive collection oftitles published in the UKand its colonies between1701 and 1800. For eachtitle not merely biblio-graphic information butalso the full text of thework, including illustra-tions and diagrams, isincluded. The collectionis the largest single digiti-sation project ever under-taken.

The statistics areimpressive: 138,000 titlesand editions, 155,000volumes and twenty-sixmillion facsimile pages.Each title has citationrecords. The text can besearched for words orphrases and it is also pos-sible to search for illus-trations.

The titles are mostly inEnglish, but foreign-lan-guage works published inthe countries covered arealso included. In additionto conventional books,the material coveredincludes almanacs, ser-mons, sheet-music and

other ephemera. The vast majorityof the collection is, of course, notastronomical. However, a wealth ofastronomical material is necessarilyincluded.

Since autumn 2005 ECCO hasbeen available to all universities and

colleges in the UK under an agree-ment between the Joint InformationSystems Committee (JISC) andThomson Gale. If you work at aninstitution covered by the agreementthen in the first instance your librar-ians should be consulted for access

details. If you do not workat such an institution then itmight be time to makefriends with a librarian atyour local university!

Access is via a Webbrowser and the interface issimple and easy to use. Iwas able to find andretrieve the illustrationaccompanying this articlewithin a few minutes ofstarting to use the system.

ECCO complements theprevious Early EnglishBooks On-line (EBBO)collection. EBBO compris-es some 125,000 titles pub-lished between 1473 and1700, starting with the ear-liest books printed inEnglish. It has been avail-able for a while under asimilar JISC agreement.

Further reading:

Accessing the EighteenthCentury, Autumn 2005,JISC Inform, no. 11, pp10-11.

Brief details of ECCO andEBBO (and other collec-tions available throughJISC) are given at:http://www.jisc.ac.uk/col-lections

Thomson Gale providepublic material aboutECCO, including a userguide, at:http://www.galeuk.com/trials/ecco/

The on-line Eighteenth CenturyClive Davenhall

The front page of a booklet published in advance of theeclipse of 22 April 1715. (Henry Prescott observed this

eclipse from Chester; see p13.) Despite the alarmist titlethe intention of the anonymous author was to reassureanxious readers. The booklet was printed in London

circa 1715 and sold by J. Read of White-Fryers , and R.Burleigh of Amen-Corner (obtained from ECCO cour-

tesy of JISC and the University of Edinburgh).


Time domainastronomyI read with interest the article ‘TimeDomain Astronomy at PARI’(Newsletter no. 16, July 2008, pp23-27) concerning the protection — insome cases even the physical rescue— of historic observations currentlystored in photographic format. I dobelieve that, as guardians of that her-itage, we have a duty, as well asbeing motivated by a multitude ofindividual scientific reasons, to ren-der that information available to thewhole community.

Although a detailed inventory ofphotographic plates world-wide hasnot yet been completed, the totalnumber is believed to be nearer threemillion than the two million whichyou suggest. There are about twomillion direct and objective-prismplates, and maybe another one mil-lion spectrograms. At least one mil-lion direct plates are in Europe,though the majority of spectrogramsis probably in the US where high-dispersion spectroscopy burgeonedearly on.

You go on to explain that, whilemany observatories maintained a

plate archive, others allowed (actu-ally they encouraged) observers totake their plates away with them,and that many of those plates arenow lost or destroyed. In fact thepicture is less dire than that. Mostobservatories did maintain archivesof their plates, the only notableexceptions being the two nationalobservatories, Kitt Peak and ESO.Astronomers are generally reluctantto throw anything away, and it isoften not until a forced office move,retirement or an executor’s clear-outthat personal hoards of plates cometo light. Reminders to return suchplates, even to PARI if appropriate,cannot have too much advertise-ment. The opportunity to create acommunity plate-archiving centre atsomewhere like PARI has a consid-erable advantages, both in retainingand managing disparate archivesunder one roof and in unifyingefforts to catalogue and eventuallydigitise them. What makes PARI aunique location for the NorthAmerican plates is really its 120,000or so square feet of unused air-con-ditioned storage space.

I did feel that your article painted arather negative picture regarding the

potential of historic plate collec-tions. While the comments concern-ing the lack of digital catalogues, thegeographic dispersion of archivesand low photographic signal/noiseratio are undeniable, astronomersare in fact vastly better off thanmany other sciences in that theyhave at least kept their historic data,often for many decades, and mostlyin a somewhat organised state. It isalso undeniable that plate archivesare little used today. The CCD hassuperior efficiency (granting theability to reach fainter magnitudes)and photometric linearity (obviatingthe need to carry out troublesomephotometric calibration).

Nevertheless, there is an amazingrichness of new science which his-toric observations of even relativelybright objects can yield, by virtue ofthe long time-base; the medium isnot the message. However, pro-grammes for wholesale digitisingwere not even on the horizon at thetime of the CCD take-over, and itnow requires extra capital just todemonstrate the potential of comple-menting a modern analysis with his-toric data. Yet it takes only a fewcompelling situations, such as the

Guided MissivesThe Newsletter welcomes letters for publicationwhich can be on any aspect of the SHA, includingits activities, projects and organisation, and, morewidely, any topic in the history of astronomy — Ed.


pre-outbust state of a supernova, tocause a resurgence of interest in(implying resources for) recoveringmore such data in digital format.

I would not agree altogether withthe statement that ‘digitising all theplates would be an enormous under-taking which is completely unrealis-tic’. Certainly the task is enormous,but is not so unrealistic if the scien-tific potential has first been assessedand selections are prioritised.Digitising plates on demand has theadvantage of letting researchers dotheir own well-informed selecting,but can be inefficient since eachfresh plate exposed with a differentinstrumental set-up may entail a del-icate scanner adjustment. It wouldsurely be better to scan upondemand just those for which someurgency can be demonstrated, whilstscanning complete sets of plates ona different machine in the back-ground. Prioritising plates for scan-ning must include a strong compo-nent of anticipated scientific return.One should also match the potentialof plates to the capabilities of a scan-ner; objective-prism plates, whoseinformation content is likely to belimited to one parameter (spectralenergy distribution), can well bedigitised with a desktop scanner,while high-dispersion spectrogramsshowing detailed spectral featuresrequire digitising with a PDS or sim-ilar purpose-built instrument whoseoutput is reliably more faithful to theoriginal.

The ‘widespread availability oflarge commercial scanners’ can be amajor danger rather than an easysolution. ‘Cheap, easy and quick’ iswhat invites their use, but they werenever designed for the stringenciesof astronomical photography and arerarely as reliable as purpose-builtinstruments. Scattered light causesphotometry problems and limits thedynamic range, and while positionalstability may be acceptable it isoften very far from so. However,they are certainly the most expedientway of producing ‘thumbnail’ scans

for posting on the Web to give aquick view of what a plate shows.

Elizabeth Griffin,Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics,Victoria, Canada and Chair of the

IAU Task Force for thePreservation and Digitization of

Photographic Plates.

I would like to thank Dr Griffin forher comments, which are well-made. She is correct about theapproximate total number of platesextant. The numbers that we quotedcame ultimately from Treasure-Hunting in Astronomical PlateArchives, eds. P Kroll, C. la Dous,and H.J. Bräuer, 1999, ActaHistorica Astronomiae, 6 (VerlagHarri Deutsch: Thun and Frankfurtam Main) and actually refer to directplates. I should have been morecareful!

The point about wholesale digitisa-tion programmes being unfeasible atthe time that CCDs took over (circa1980) is a good one which is oftenoverlooked. The computer technolo-gy then available, at a price thatastronomers could afford, was inad-equate in terms of processing speed,storage capacity and longevity ofdigital media for large-scale digiti-sation programmes. Indeed, manyearly CCD data were also not pre-served, partly for similar reasons.

The long-term preservation of dig-ital information remains a topic ofactive research, of course. However,a full discussion of these issues isbeyond the scope of the Newsletterand will have to wait for anotherday.

Clive Davenhall,Editor, SHA Newsletter,

Edinburgh.

The Data Processing Laboratory, University Observatory, St Andrews inthe spring of 1981. The main purpose of the computers pictured was tocontrol a null-balancing mark IIIc Joyce Loebl microdensitometer and

reduce the data that it generated. Part of this microdensitometer (or ratherits protective cover) is just visible on the extreme right of the photograph,slightly above centre. It was bought in the 1960s, when it was used exten-

sively to make analogue measurements, and converted to computerisedoperation during the 1970s. Many institutions had similar instrumentsduring this period, but they were used for individual research projects

rather than systematic digitisation programmes. (I am grateful to Trumpsof 13, Clerk Street, Edinburgh for their careful digitisation of the negative

to ensure that the maximum amount of the Joyce Loebl was visible —Clive Davenhall.)


Christ Church Cathedral,Oxford, which keeps local

rather than civil time.

IT is well-known that beforethe mid-nineteenth century

most clocks kept local time,marking noon when the Suntransited the local meridian. Itwas only with the coming ofthe railways and the telegraphthat there was a need to adoptstandardised time over wide-spread geographic areas.

A few months ago I saw a let-ter in the newspaper to theeffect that Christ ChurchCathedral, Oxford still keepslocal time (Daily Telegraph, 1May 2008).

If you know of any churchesor other institutions that stillkeep local time we will bepleased to hear from you.Suitable letters will be pub-lished in the Newsletter (thecorrespondence address is onthe back page) and the detailswill be added to the appropriatepage of the SHA’s CountySurvey (see p39).

Time Gentlemen PleaseClive Davenhall

Book ReviewsO’Connor, James, IrishAstronomical Society — aHistory. Paperback, privatelypublished, Dublin, 2006, €14,pp207.The Irish Astronomical Societywas founded in Dublin in 1937by a group of amateurastronomers with little experi-ence but immense enthusiasm.From that small beginning theSociety grew, its meetings con-sisting at first in lectures givenweekly by one of its scholarly

members. The author of thisHistory who joined the IrishAstronomical Society as aschoolboy and kept notes of itsactivities ever since, puts onrecord the early days of mirrorgrinding efforts, outings to thehomes of telescope owners, andlifelong friendships formed. TheSociety’s thriving bimonthlyBulletin, Orbit, begun in 1958,shows that the spirit of the old-timers is still alive and well.

In the Society’s early years,


Ireland had no functioning profes-sional observatory. It was only afterthe second world war that DunsinkObservatory, Dublin, was re-found-ed, and Armagh Observatory inNorthern Ireland became activeagain. The Irish AstronomicalSociety forged happy ties withastronomers at the observatories,and branches were formed inBelfast, Armagh and other towns.These arrangements did not alto-gether escape the political squabblesof the 1970s, but did not impede thecontinuity of the original Society inDublin of which this History is adetailed record. Various highlightsare recorded: Sir Patrick Moore’sbrief but much cherished time asDirector of the Planetarium atArmagh; the congress of theInternational Association ofAstronomical Artists, the interna-tional society (now lapsed) of ama-teur astronomers in Dublin in 1978attended by delegates from twentyone countries; the restoration ofLord Rosse’s giant telescope at Birr,Co. Offaly, in 1997 (see alsoNewsletter 14, October 2007, pp19-20).

Ireland, notwithstanding its smallsize, has a long tradition in astrono-my, and it is satisfying to find thisreflected in the Society’s activitiesand lecture lists since its foundation.The author is himself keenly inter-ested in astronomical history, thepublication of this excellent bookbeing a practical contribution to thatendeavour. The doings of todayform the history of tomorrow; andJames O’Connor’s painstaking com-pendium (207 pages, illustrated) isan example that others might wellfollow.

The book is published privatelyand is available at Hanna’s book-shop, Lower Rathmines Road,Dublin 6, or directly from the authorat 90 Acorn Road, Dundrum, Dublin16. A copy, presented by the IrishAstronomical Society, is in the SHALibrary.

Mary Brück.

Kanas, Nick, Star Maps: History,Artistry and Cartography.Paperback, Springer-Praxis,Chichester, 2007, ISBN 978-0-387-71668-8, £19.50, pp382 + xxvii.

Star Maps is perhaps the most com-prehensive treatment of astronomi-cal cartography since Basil Brown’sAstronomical Atlases, Maps andCharts was first published in 1932.Star Maps is a 380-plus page, inch-thick slab of well-written informa-tion.

Covering three millennia and fourcontinents, Star Maps is introducedby a chapter explaining our Earth-centred perspective on the night skyand how this has been interpreted inthe production of constellationcharts and star maps through theages. The subsequent chaptersextend this theme and develop it indetail with specific references toChinese, Indian and Mediterraneanastronomy and astronomical cartog-raphy from the first millennium BC

down to more recent times. Islamicand early European astro-cartogra-phy is amply covered but the book

really scores with Prof. Kanas’sextensive treatment of post-Reformation European astronomyand the ‘golden age’ of star mappingbetween the sixteenth and eigh-

teenth centuries.There is a separatechapter on special top-ics; celestial globesand gores, volvellesand astronomicalinstruments, includingthe AntikytheraMechanism.

Kanas’s book isworth its weight ingold for the very manybiographies ofastronomers that formthe main body of thetext in every chapterand is a superb refer-ence for this aspectalone.

Star Maps is broughtfully up to date withchapters on Americanastronomy of the nine-teenth and twentiethcenturies and its owncontribution to astro-

nomical cartography, by then includ-ing the great photographic sky sur-veys. Twentieth-century astronomi-cal cartography wouldn’t be com-plete without mention of Norton’sStar Atlas and those of Becvar andTirion, and these are given full atten-tion, as are many less important staratlases.

Throughout, the book is well illus-trated with monochrome photo-graphs accompanying the descrip-tion of individual publications andtopics. Many of the illustrations aretaken from Kanas’s own extensivecollection of antiquarian star atlasesand astronomical charts. There arethree separate colour plate sectionsaccompanying specific chapters,showing some of the same picturesin colour. Each of the ten chaptersend with a comprehensive bibliogra-phy. Five appendices cover topics oncollecting astronomical atlases and


charts; a supplementary referencecatalogue; indices of major constel-lation atlases; the ‘King’sTopographical Collection’ at theBritish Library, and a glossary.

This book contains so muchdetailed information that it is almostimpossible to criticise. Howeversome of the photographic illustra-tions show key-stoning where thecamera is out of square with thechart or atlas and it has been sug-gested in another review that itshould include representationsthought to be of the Moon and starsthat have been found in some prehis-toric tombs of the second millenni-um BC. These are minor criticisms,far outweighed by the quality andquantity of the information StarMaps contains and can easily beaddressed in future editions.

In summary, Prof. Kanas has pro-duced a superb addition for thelibrary of anyone interested in thehistory of astronomy. Star Maps islikely to become the standard refer-ence on astronomical cartographyfor many years hence. Nick KanasMD is Professor in Residence, Dept.of Psychiatry, University ofCalifornia, San Francisco.

Kevin Kilburn

Gribbin, John, Galaxies: a VeryShort Introduction (Very ShortIntroduction series). Paperback,Oxford University Press, 2008,ISBN: 978-0-19-923434-9, £6.99,pp136.Many amateur astronomers con-tributed to the ‘Galaxy Zoo’ Website project by classifying thousandsof galaxies according to simple cri-teria and many became familiar withthe shapes of spiral, elliptical andirregular galaxies. But what arethese strange collections of stars,how did they evolve and how willthey end? This little book attemptsto answer some of these questions.

The ‘Very Short Introductions’ area series of attractive pocket-sized lit-tle books on all types of subjects,probably aimed at students but

appealing to anyone with a desire toquickly appreciate a subject. Othersof interest to astronomers areCosmology by Peter Coles (2001)and The History of Astronomy byMichael Hoskin (2003), there arealso volumes on Galileo andNewton.

By way of introduction the bookstarts with the first telescopic obser-vations of the stars, where LeonardDigges is given credit as the first tel-escopic observer. The story is fol-lowed through Thomas Wright’s‘mill wheel’ and Immanuel Kant’s‘island universes’, to WilliamParson’s discovery of spiral nebulae.Particular attention is given to the‘Great Debate’ of 1920 betweenShapley and Curtis, where Shapleysaw the Milky Way as the wholeUniverse and Curtis saw spiral neb-ulae as galaxies like our own. V.Slipher’s discovery of the redshift ofthe nebulae and Curtis’ evidencefrom the distance of novae showedthat the spiral nebulae were at animmense distance from the MilkyWay and could not be part of it.Then Hubble showed the relationbetween the redshift and the dis-tance of the spiral nebulae, and theirnature as separate galaxies becameaccepted. It is a great pity that thekey papers in the history of the dis-

covery of the galaxies mentioned inthis book are not given bibliograph-ic details.

As we get to modern interpreta-tions of galaxies the book becomesmuch more cosmological. This isunderstandable for galaxies are thelargest ‘things’ in the Universe.However, the modern theories ofgalaxy evolution depend on a wholeseries of little-understood concepts.Cold Dark Matter represents 6:1 ofthe ‘normal’ (baryonic) matter ofgalaxies and affects their rotation,but ‘…nobody knows exactly whatit is’ (p113). Dark energy is respon-sible for the cosmic expansion, butis otherwise invisible. The centres ofgalaxies contain supermassive blackholes which co-evolve with thegalaxies themselves. The author hasa strong grasp of these concepts anda clear manner in putting themacross. This material is the realstrength of the book.

I noticed some annoying historicalerrors; on p42 we are toldCopernicus transformed astronomyin ‘1653’, obviously a typo for‘1543’. Also the book says Dopplertested his ‘effect’ by listening tomusicians carried by a railway car-riage, when this was actually anexperiment by C.H.D. Buys Ballotwho was sceptical of Doppler’swork (see Hearnshaw, 1992). KnutLundmark was a Swedish and not aDanish astronomer (p18). The bookcould also be improved with dia-grams to illustrate the classificationof galaxies, the structure of spiralgalaxies and possibly the differentpopulations of stars.

I would not recommend this bookto historians of astronomy, but if youwant to know how today’sastronomers understand galaxies itis a very good, very short introduc-tion.

Mark HurnReference:

J.B. Hearnshaw ‘Doppler and Vogel— two notable anniversaries in stel-lar astronomy’, Vistas in Astronomy,35 (1992), pp157-177.


Books noticedMadeline Cox and Clive Davenhall

This column lists some recentlypublished books which might be ofinterest. Listing here does not pre-clude a review at a later date, nordoes it necessarily imply endorse-ment. Books are given their thirteendigit ISBN. Please note prices mayvary according to suppliers.

Aughton, P, The Story of Astronomy.Quercus, 2008, hardback, ISBN978-1847246226, £20.

Aveni, A.T, People and the Sky: OurAncestors and the Cosmos. Thamesand Hudson, 2008, hardback, ISBN978-0500051528, £18.95

Barrow, J.D, Cosmic Imagery: KeyImages in the History of Science.W.W. Norton, 2008, hardback, ISBN978-0393061772, £28.50.

Giacconi, R, Secrets of the HoaryDeep: a Personal History of ModernAstronomy. John Hopkins Univ.

Press, 2008, hardback, ISBN 978-0801888090, £30.

Heidarzadeh, T, A History ofPhysical Theories of Comets fromAristotle to Whipple. Kluwer, 2008,hardback, ISBN 978-1402083228,£105.50.

Ivanovich, G, Salyut: the First SpaceStation (Springer Praxis books:Space Exploration). Springer-Verlag, 2008, paperback, ISBN 978-0387735856, £19.50.

Methuen, C, Science and Theologyin the Reformation: Studies inInterpretation of AstronomicalObservation in Sixteenth-centuryGermany. T. and T. Clark, 2008,hardback, ISBN 978-0567032713,£55.

North, J, Cosmos: an IllustratedHistory of Astronomy andCosmology (rev. ed). Chicago Univ.Press, 2008, paperback, ISBN 978-0226594415, £20.50.

Verma, S, The Mystery of theTunguska Fireball. Icon Books,2006, paperback, ISBN 978-1840467282, £7.99.

Woolfson, M, The Formation of theSolar System: Theories Old andNew. World Scientific, 2007, hard-back, ISBN 978-1860948244,£49.00 / $(US)95.00.

Also noticedClive Davenhall

Listing here dies not constitute areview, nor preclude future review.Information is given in good faithbut cannot be guaranteed.

The New MoonThe latest issue of The New Moon(17, no. 1, September 2008), thejournal of the BAA Lunar Section,Topographical Subsection, hasrecently been released. It is men-tioned here because the single paperthat it contains has a historicaltheme. This paper describes the lifeand work of H.P. Wilkins (1896-1960), selemographer and long-standing Director of the BAA LunarSection (1946-1956). The issue isavailable in PDF format and can bedownloaded free of charge fromhttp://www.baalunarsection.org.uk/tnm.htm

Biography of Giordano BrunoRowland, Ingrid, Giordano Bruno:Philosopher/Heretic. Hardback,Farrar, Straus and Giroux, NewYork, 2008, ISBN-13: 978-0809095247, £17.99 / $(US)27.00,pp352.


Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) isfamous amongst astronomers as thescholar who, unlike Galileo, wasburnt at the stake for professingCopernicanism. The full story, asever, is more complex. Bruno didprofess (a somewhat muddled)Copernicanism and he was burnt asa heretic. But there was more to bothhis philosophy and his dispute withthe Church authorities thanCopernicanism. Ingrid Rowland haswritten the first biography of Brunoin English. The Web site of The NewYorker magazine has a review byJoan Acocella which is an interest-ing essay in its own right. See:http://www.newyorker.com/arts/crit-ics/books/2008/08/25/080825crbo_books_acocella

English Country ChurchesStrong, Roy, A Little History of theEnglish Country Church. Paperback,Vintage, London, 2008, ISBN-13:978-1844138302, £9.99, pp256.From even a casual acquaintancewith astronomy’s history in theBritish Isles it is obvious that manyof its practitioners were the incum-bents of country parishes. Manyamongst the clergy had other schol-arly pursuits, perhaps antiquities ornatural history. Strong’s book iswhat its title implies: a history of the

English Country Church. There is noastronomical content, but it might beuseful background reading if yourresearches lead you to a Ministerwhose interests extended to the skyas well as the heavens.

NASA history series on-lineNASA has been making volumes inits out-of-print NASA History seriesavailable on-line. The documentsare in PDF format. Some are quitelarge and so might take a while todownload. They are available at:http://history.nasa.gov/what.html#online

Standing stones DVDBott, Michael (director) and Soskin,Rupert (presenter), Standing withStones. All Regions DVD,Illuminated Word, 2008, ASIN:B0012BU0D8, £17.99.

The megalithic monuments of theBritish Isles are a continuing sourceof fascination, and some, of course,have significant astronomi-cal alignments (thoughmany do not and none wereobservatories in any mod-ern sense). This documen-tary presents more than ahundred examples of vari-ous types (stone circles,standing stones, stone rows,dolmens etc). Each monu-ment is shown in its geo-

graphical context with little specula-tion. The sites are grouped by geo-graphical region, from the WestCountry to the Scottish Isles.

The project is the work of MichaelBott (who directs) and RupertSoskin (the presenter). It took themeight years and 8000 miles to com-plete; clearly a labour of love. Themain programme lasts over two anda quarter hours, there are nearly fourhours of extras and twelve postcardsare included, making the packagevery good value for money. It wouldmake an ideal Christmas present foranyone interested in archaeoastrono-my. For a full review see ForteanTimes, 241, October 2008, p66. TheDVD is available from: http://www.standingwithstones.com. A relatedbook is to be published early in2009.

Stonehenge kitStonehenge: Build Your OwnAncient Wonder. Running Press,2008, ISBN-13: 978-0762430178,£6.69.This children’s kit is subtitled ‘buildyour own ancient wonder.’ It com-prises sixteen pieces, each corre-sponding to one of the stones, whichare placed at marked locations on aground plan to build a model ofStonehenge. The kit comes with athirty two page illustrated bookletwhich is informative and reasonablyunsensational. It would be an idealChristmas present for any buddingarchaeoastronomer. Suitable forchildren over three years. Indeed,suitable for schoolboys of all ages,as the saying goes. The kit is avail-able from Amazon.


SINCE theSurvey was

launched in 2003 Ihave written aboutit on a number ofoccasions: in theNewsletter (forexample, no. 7,June 2005, pp7-8),The AntiquarianAstronomer, (3,2006, pp69-74)and in the FASnewsletter. Thoseof you who haveattended SHAconferences in thepast will haveseen and heard mypresentations onthe subject. Irecently suggestedto Council thatnow might be theright time to starta regular page inthe Newsletter devoted to theSurvey. To make this item a successI need contributions from members.I will of course be asking our coun-ty co-ordinators for news about theirown areas of research, but I believethere is much to be gained fromother members who I am sure musthave interesting data on ‘lost’astronomers and observatories.

In my report to Council at thisyear’s AGM I announced that Iwould be compiling a master list ofastronomers and observatories, sep-arate from the county database,which members might find useful.For those members not familiar withthe Web site (http://www.shastro.org.uk) the following counties havebeen adopted and our membersresearch has been posted to the site.

Mark Butterworth: Stirling (ex-member)

Madeline Cox: Nottinghamshire,Derbyshire

Ken Goward: Suffolk, Essex

Mark Hurn: Cambridgeshire,Cornwall (part)

Bryn Jones: Wales (not a co-ordina-tor but contributed his Welshresearch to the survey)

Michael Leggett: Buckingham-shire, Lincolnshire, Rutland

Martin Lunn: Yorkshire

George Wilkins: Devon

Stuart Williams: Staffordshire

In addition the following countieshave been adopted, but research is inprogress and not yet ready for inclu-sion: Cheshire, Channel Islands,Herefordshire, Isle of Man,Lancashire, Middlesex, Monmouth,

Oxfordshire and Wiltshire.So, if there is a county not listed

above that you would like to adopt,just go to the Web site and completethe adoption form or email me [email protected]. Infuture we will be featuring a differ-ent county in each issue.

Finally, this issue’s puzzler … isanything known about the RevdArthur Browne, incumbent atFlitton, Bedfordshire between 1834and his death in 1876? Bedfordshirearchives hold his diary (ref. A2A,unseen) which contains many refer-ences to astronomical observationsmade from the telescope in his gar-den.

The Survey of Astronomical HistoryRoger Jones

Sometimes unusual and interestingimages can be found searching

through Web pages. Members whoregularly scan the eBay listings for

astronomical items may havenoticed the first photograph (left) a

few months ago. I am not surewhether he is waiting for visitorsor just for nightfall. Perhaps he

was trying to emulate theGreenwich gatekeeper seen in thesecond photograph (right). Does

anyone know who he was?


Observatory scrapbookClive Davenhall

THIS article is the firstof a new series to

complement the preced-ing item on the Society’sSurvey. Each issue willfeature an illustration andbrief description of somehistorical observatory.

Appropriately enoughfor the first entry, the pho-tograph right shows anobservatory still underconstruction: theW i g g l e s w o r t hObservatory nearScarborough, NorthYorkshire in 1885.Workmen assemble thedome while two ladies sitat the foot of the step lad-der, their servants stand-ing behind them.

The observatorybelonged to JamesWigglesworth (1815-1888), a local business-man. By 1885 MrWigglesworth was anamateur astronomer oflong standing, havingobserved for over thirtyyears, mostly with a six-inch Cooke refractor.However, the new obser-vatory represented a dramaticimprovement in instrumentation.The dome was some thirty feet indiameter and housed another Cookerefractor, albeit one of fifteen-inchaperture.

Wigglesworth engaged J. GerhardLohse (1851-1941) as an observer.Lohse, of German extraction, hadpreviously worked at LordCrawford’s Observatory at DunEcht, Scotland, under RalphCopland.

Unfortunately the observatoryenjoyed only a short life; it closed in1888 when Wigglesworth died.Subsequently both the telescope and

dome were sold to an Italianastronomer, who moved them toTeramo in central Italy, where theyremain. Lohse moved to the RoyalObservatory Edinburgh, where hisold boss Copland was nowAstronomer Royal for Scotland.

Despite its short life the observato-ry was productive. Observations ofcomets and the planets were pub-lished. Measurements of twentynebulae were made (using amicrometer loaned by LordCrawford) and communicated toJ.L.E. Dreyer for inclusion in thegeneral catalogue of nebulae the lat-ter was compiling.

We encourage you tocontribute entries for theObservatory Scrapbookseries. The guidelines aresimple. There should be atleast one illustration ofsome historical observa-tory accompanied by abrief description. In thiscontext ‘historical’ means‘in existence before1945.’ Typically thedescription will be only afew hundred words long,though more extensivepieces are acceptable.

Pictures that are them-selves pre-1945 are pre-ferred, though modernones are acceptable, par-ticularly as supplemen-tary illustrations.Photographs, paintings,engravings, drawings etc.are all acceptable. Less-familiar observatories inthe UK and the IrishRepublic are preferred, inthe spirit of the Survey,though major and over-seas institutions are notexcluded. You shouldsend contributions to theeditorial address on the

back page. We hope to hear fromyou.

Further reading:

There is an interesting article aboutthe Wigglesworth Observatory at:http://www.oldham-optical.co.uk/Wigglesworth.htm

Some brief biographical informationabout J.G, Lohse is included at:http://www.klima-luft.de/steinicke/ngcic/persons/lohse.htm

For a full description of the DunEcht Observatory see H.A. Brück,Vistas in Astronomy, 35 (1992),pp81-138.

The Wigglesworth Observatory near Scarborough, NorthYorkshire under construction in 1885 (Photograph cour-tesy of the Science and Society Picture Library, reference

10418935).

The Wigglesworth Observatory

acd

Textbox

Image removed because of licence or copyright restrictions.


Observatory scrapbookClive Davenhall

THIS article is the firstof a new series to

complement the preced-ing item on the Society’sSurvey. Each issue willfeature an illustration andbrief description of somehistorical observatory.

Appropriately enoughfor the first entry, the pho-tograph right shows anobservatory still underconstruction: theW i g g l e s w o r t hObservatory nearScarborough, NorthYorkshire in 1885.Workmen assemble thedome while two ladies sitat the foot of the step lad-der, their servants stand-ing behind them.

The observatorybelonged to JamesWigglesworth (1815-1888), a local business-man. By 1885 MrWigglesworth was anamateur astronomer oflong standing, havingobserved for over thirtyyears, mostly with a six-inch Cooke refractor.However, the new obser-vatory represented a dramaticimprovement in instrumentation.The dome was some thirty feet indiameter and housed another Cookerefractor, albeit one of fifteen-inchaperture.

Wigglesworth engaged J. GerhardLohse (1851-1941) as an observer.Lohse, of German extraction, hadpreviously worked at LordCrawford’s Observatory at DunEcht, Scotland, under RalphCopland.

Unfortunately the observatoryenjoyed only a short life; it closed in1888 when Wigglesworth died.Subsequently both the telescope and

dome were sold to an Italianastronomer, who moved them toTeramo in central Italy, where theyremain. Lohse moved to the RoyalObservatory Edinburgh, where hisold boss Copland was nowAstronomer Royal for Scotland.

Despite its short life the observato-ry was productive. Observations ofcomets and the planets were pub-lished. Measurements of twentynebulae were made (using amicrometer loaned by LordCrawford) and communicated toJ.L.E. Dreyer for inclusion in thegeneral catalogue of nebulae the lat-ter was compiling.

We encourage you tocontribute entries for theObservatory Scrapbookseries. The guidelines aresimple. There should be atleast one illustration ofsome historical observa-tory accompanied by abrief description. In thiscontext ‘historical’ means‘in existence before1945.’ Typically thedescription will be only afew hundred words long,though more extensivepieces are acceptable.

Pictures that are them-selves pre-1945 are pre-ferred, though modernones are acceptable, par-ticularly as supplemen-tary illustrations.Photographs, paintings,engravings, drawings etc.are all acceptable. Less-familiar observatories inthe UK and the IrishRepublic are preferred, inthe spirit of the Survey,though major and over-seas institutions are notexcluded. You shouldsend contributions to theeditorial address on the

back page. We hope to hear fromyou.

Further reading:

There is an interesting article aboutthe Wigglesworth Observatory at:http://www.oldham-optical.co.uk/Wigglesworth.htm

Some brief biographical informationabout J.G, Lohse is included at:http://www.klima-luft.de/steinicke/ngcic/persons/lohse.htm

For a full description of the DunEcht Observatory see H.A. Brück,Vistas in Astronomy, 35 (1992),pp81-138.

The Wigglesworth Observatory near Scarborough, NorthYorkshire under construction in 1885 (Photograph cour-tesy of the Science and Society Picture Library, reference

10418935).

The Wigglesworth Observatory


Library NewsMadeline Cox and Stuart Williams

LibraryreorganisationA major reorganisation and upgrad-ing of our Library collections hastaken place recently. The Sir PatrickMoore Lending Library, previouslyhoused with Head LibrarianMadeline Cox, has now beenmoved to our premises in theBenson Room at the Birminghamand Midland Institute. It has beenreunited with our other collections,which now comprise the following:

Sir Robert Ball Library — GeneralCollection

Sir Robert Ball Library —Reference and AV Collection

Sir Robert Ball Library — JournalsCollection

Sir Robert Ball Library — TheStuart Williams Collection (includ-ing a space flight section)

Sir Patrick Moore Library —Lending Collection

Sir Robert Ball Library — The AlanCox Memorial Collection ofAmateur Astronomy

Extra shelving has been installedand the room rearranged to make itmore attractive and easier to use.

We have also purchased a second-hand laptop computer with software(courtesy of Research LibrarianStuart Williams), a new photocopierand scanner.

We hope members will availthemselves of the new excellentfacilities.

Madeline Cox and Roger Jones in front of the new shelving at our Library premises in the Benson Room at theBMI in Birmingham. Picture by Stuart Williams.

LibrarycatalogueThe Library catalogue is currentlybeing updated to include recentchanges outlined above. When com-plete it will be posted on the Website. Each collection will be listedseparately, together with a unifiedcatalogue.

Library manualAs soon as our catalogues are updat-ed we will publish them as part of alibrary manual for members. Thismanual will also include details onhow to use the Library and details ofaccess to other library collections.

Opening timesMay we remind members that theLibrary is open by arrangement so ifyou would like to come along tobrowse or to borrow, do get in touch.Contact Madeline Cox ([email protected], telephone

01623 844121), or Stuart Williamsemail [email protected]).

PurchasesAs well as the equipment for theBenson Room, we have purchasedthe following items for the Library.All are for reference only. Pleasecontact Madeline Cox for furtherinformation.

Payne-Gaposchkin, C. Stars in theMaking (1953); Webb, Revd. T W.Celestial Objects for CommonTelescopes, ed. and revised by W.Mayall (1917); Whyte, C. Our SolarSystem and the Stellar Universe: TenPopular Lectures (1917; 1962reprint); Buedler, W. To OtherWorlds (1923) and Gatland, K.Wand Kunesch, A.M. Space Travel(1953).

DonationsWe have recently received the fol-lowing donations. As usual, we

thank our donors for their generosityand apologise if we have inadver-tently omitted anyone.

Oxford University Press donatedGribbin.J. Galaxies: a very shortintroduction (2008). Roger Hutchinsdonated his book British UniversityObservatories 1772-1939 (2008).Ian Elliottt donated two copies ofthe following: ScientificProceedings of the Royal DublinSociety, Award of the Boyle Medalto Sir Howard Grubb (1912) andScientific Proceedings of the RoyalDublin Society, Improvements inEquatorial Telescope Mountings(1912). Peter Hingley donatedBailey, Mark E. Border Heritage:Tracing the Heritage of the City ofArmagh and Monaghan County.Michael Oates donated copies of hisrecordings of the SHA Conference atChetham’s Library 29 March 2008and the SHA AGM and SpringConference 2008 (mp3 files).Finally Stuart Williams donated The2006 Children’s Writers and ArtistsYearbook and The 2007 Writers andArtists Yearbook.

Page 42 SHA Newsletter Issue 17 October 2008

By kind invitation SHA membersmay use the RAS Library. The open-ing hours are 10:00 am - 5:00 pm,Monday to Friday. The address ofthe RAS is Burlington House,Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BQ.Contact Peter Hingley (020-7734 -4582, ext. 215; mobile: 07757133891 or [email protected]).

On-line catalogue: http://ras.her-itage4.com

Saturday openingThe RAS Library opens on the firstSaturday of each month, BankHolidays excepted. For the remain-der of 2008 the RAS Library will beopen 10:00 am to 5:00 pm on the

following Saturdays: 4 October, 1November and 6 December. Asbefore there will only be one mem-ber of staff on duty so it will be nec-essary to ring the bell and wait to beadmitted; if the delay is excessiveplease telephone (details above).

To date the Saturday openingshave attracted little interest. It willonly be possible to justify continu-ing this service if it is used, so use itor lose it is the message.

Other librariesROE LibraryBy kind invitation SHA membersmay use the ROE (RoyalObservatory Edinburgh) Library.The Library is usually open duringoffice hours, Monday to Friday.

However, visitors should contact theLibrarian beforehand to arrange asuitable time and bring their SHAmembership card for identification.Contact Karen Moran (0131-668-8395 or [email protected]).

On-line catalogue: http://www.roe.ac.uk/roe/library/index.html and fol-low the links: ‘Search the MainLibrary Catalogue’ and ‘ROECatalogue’.

Andrew Stephens’ LibraryMr Andrew Stephens of Cheltenhamhas generously offered SHA mem-bers the use of his extensive privateastronomical library (see Newsletterno. 12, November 2006, pp20-21).In the first instance contactMadeline Cox ([email protected], or telephone 01623 844121).

RAS Library NewsPeter Hingley


Forthcoming meetings and eventsClive Davenhall

The following meetings and eventswill be held during 2008. Unlessnoted otherwise, booking is neces-sary for meetings but not for exhibi-tions. Except where noted the eventsare organised by the SHA. Thedetails of non-SHA events arechecked as far as possible but cannotbe guaranteed. Items for inclusion inthis list in future issues of theNewsletter are welcome. Theyshould be sent to the editorialaddress on the back page.

Mon. 29 Sep. to Mon. 8 Dec.Astronomy and Scientific Learningin the Islamic World (AD 800-1600).Evening course at Birkbeck College,University of London. One eveningper week, 6:30 to 8:30. Fee£150/£75. See http://www.bbk.ac.

uk/study/ce/worldartandartefacts/courses/ (non-SHA event).

Sat. 4 Oct. SHA Autumn Conferenceat the Birmingham and MidlandsInstitute, Birmingham. This meetingwill be a Review of Members’ Work.See p3.

Tue. 28 Oct. - Wed. 29 Oct. NASA’sFirst fifty Years: a HistoricalPerspective. To be held at NASAHQ, Washington, DC. No registra-tion required. See http://history.nasa.gov/50thannnasaconf/index.html(non-SHA event).

2009The following meetings will takeplace early in 2009.

Sat. 28 Mar. Joint meeting with theRoyal Meteorological Society to beheld in the premises of the RAS,Burlington House, Piccadilly,London. Tickets cost £10.00 or£15.00 for non-members.

Fri. 8 May. Mars Before the SpaceAge. RAS Discussion Meeting, to beheld in the premises of the RAS,Burlington House, Piccadilly,London. Admission £15.00 if not aFellow of the RAS (non-SHAevent).

Sat. 18 July. AGM and SummerConference. To be held at theNational Maritime Museum,Greenwich. A joint meeting with theScientific Instrument Society(http://www.sis.org.uk/).

Bunk and bilgeClive Davenhall

STUART Williams prefixed hisrecent article on the launch of

Sputnik 1 (Newsletter 15, December2007, pp4-9) by quoting a remarkmade by Sir Harold Spencer Jones(Astronomer Royal, 1933-55) in1957:

Space travel is bunk.

SHA member Roger Griffin ques-tioned this quotation and wonderedwhether it was a confusion with asimilar comment about the prospectsfor space travel that Spencer Jones’successor as Astronomer Royal, SirRichard van der Riet Woolley, hadmade about a year earlier:

It’s utter bilge.

It is rather unfortunate, though per-haps inevitable, that posterity shouldhave remembered Woolley’sremark. It was made off-the-cuffimmediately after he had disem-

barked from a long and tiring flightfrom Australia and while he wasbeing badgered by a pack ofreporters.

I have tried to locate the originalsource for the Spencer Jones quota-tion. It is appears in several on-lineselections but I have been unable tofind a printed version or a referenceto the source.

I wondered whether it might bementioned in the early volumes ofthe BIS magazine Spaceflight, per-haps following the launch ofSputnik 1 and subsequent satellites.I could not find any such mention,though the magazine did publishtwo short collections of quotationsabout the implausibility of space-flight: The Hum and the Bug by P.E.Cleator (Spaceflight, 1, 1956, p33)and It was in the Papers by W.Johnson (Spaceflight, 1, 1956,p116). Cleator reproduced the quo-

tation from Woolley, but neithermentioned Spencer Jones.

Thus at the moment the SpencerJones quotation seems likely to begenuine but is still unconfirmed. Ifanyone knows its source we will bepleased to hear about it and will pub-lish suitable replies.

Cleator’s article contains a quotein a similar vein on the difficulties ofinterplanetary travel taken fromConsider the Heavens by F.R.Moulton (1935, Univ. ChicagoPress):

It must be stated that there is notthe slightest possibility of such ajourney. There is not in sight anysource of energy that would be a fairstart toward that which would benecessary to get us beyond the grav-itative control of the earth. There isno theory which would guide usthrough interplanetary space toanother world even if we could con-


Articles, letters and Newsletterinquiries should be sent to theEditor, Clive Davenhall at theaddress opposite. For electronic con-tributions the email address is:

[email protected]

SHA Council and OfficersHon President

Dr Allan Chapman

Hon Vice Presidents:Dr Michael HoskinSir Patrick Moore CBE FRS

ChairmanGilbert Satterthwaite FRAS [email protected]

SecretaryKevin Kilburn FRAS [email protected] Low Leighton Road, New Mills, High Peak,Derbyshire, SK22 4JF

Acting Temporary TreasurerPeter Hingley [email protected] Librarian, Royal Astronomical Society, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BQ

Council MembersKenneth J. Goward FRAS [email protected] Grover FRAS [email protected] Lunn MBE [email protected]

Editor, The Antiquarian AstronomerDr W R Withey* [email protected] Lennox Close, Gosport, PO12 2UJ

Assistant Editor, The Antiquarian AstronomerKevin Johnson* [email protected]

Editor, SHA Newsletter (for all correspondence)Clive Davenhall [email protected] Millar Crescent, Morningside, Edinburgh, EH10 5HH

Layout Editor, SHA NewsletterPeter Grego FRAS [email protected]

Head LibrarianMadeline Cox FRAS* [email protected]

Research LibrarianStuart Williams FRAS* research.librarian

@shastro.org.uk

ArchivistMark Hurn FRAS* [email protected]

Survey Co-ordinatorRoger Jones* [email protected]

Web site ManagerDavid Henderson [email protected]

General communications to the Society should be directed to theSecretary in the first instance.

SHA Web site: http://www.shastro.org.uk* - also a Council Member

The deadline for the next edition of the SHA Newsletter isSaturday 6 December 2008

trol our departure from the earth;there is no means of carrying thelarge amount of oxygen, water, andfood that would be necessary forsuch a long journey; and there is noknown way of easing our ether shipdown on the surface of anotherworld, if we could get there.

Cleator also recalls the reaction ofan unnamed eminent London dailyto the 1948 announcement by thethen US Secretary of State forDefense James Forrestal that hiscountry was working on artificialsatellite programmes:

… moonshine schemes for plat-forms suspended in space, reachedin rocket-ships, and despatchingatom-headed rocket bombs to anypart of the globe …

Actually this comment seems morelike a (not entirely unreasonable)response to Frank Tinsley’s specula-tive article in Mechanix Illustratedthat was prompted by Forrestal’sannouncement than to the brief andunspecific announcement itself (seeNewsletter 15, December 2007,pp17-18). I am grateful to KarenMoran for continued access to theROE Library which facilitated thisnot entirely serious inquiry.

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