H•A•D NEWS
_______________________________________
The Newsletter of the Historical Astronomy
Division
of the American Astronomical Society
_______________________________________
Number 78 * April 2011
H•A•D NEWS
_______________________________________
The Newsletter of the Historical Astronomy
Division
of the American Astronomical Society
_______________________________________
Number 78 * April 2011
Regime Change in Seattle
Jarita Holbrook, University
of Arizona, took over the reins of HAD at the close of the annual business
meeting on 10 January in Seattle. The image shows her accepting the gavel and
the “Ich bin HAD” plaque from Thomas Hockey, University of Northern Iowa, who
is now Past Chair, which makes him chair of the HAD Prize Committee.
The new Vice Chair is
Jay Pasachoff, Williams College. His duties include soliciting and editing the
AAS obituaries. The new members of the HAD Committee are Richard Jarrell, York
University, and Wayne Osborn, Central Michigan University. The sixth member of
the HAD Committee is continuing Secretary-Treasurer Joe Tenn, Sonoma
State University.
History of
Variable Stars in Boston
Thomas
R. Williams
On Sunday, 22 May
2011, The Historical Astronomy Division will hold an unusual second meeting for
2011. This will be a part of a joint meeting of the AAS and the American
Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) in Boston. Now celebrating its
centennial, the AAVSO was founded in Norwich, Connecticut, in October, 1911, by
attorney and writer William Tyler Olcott. During its first decade the AAVSO
received support from E.C. Pickering and the staff of Harvard College
Observatory and from 1919 to 1954 it had its headquarters at the HCO.
The HAD sessions will feature historical papers relevant to variable
star astronomy. Ten invited papers have been scheduled in two topical sessions:
I. Women in the History of Variable Star Astronomy, and II. Variable Star
Astronomy in Theory and Practice. Organized by former HAD Chair Tom Williams,
these two sessions will be informative to historians and astronomers from AAVSO
as well as the AAS.
Session I, chaired by historian and former HAD chair Sara Schechner, offers
the first of two installments of papers on women astronomers important to the history of
variable star astronomy and of the AAVSO. This first installment will include
papers by Barbara Welther, Kate Bracher, Maria J. Cahill, and Kristine Larsen.
Welther and Bracher are, of course, former chairs of the HAD. Cahill recently
completed her doctoral thesis on former AAVSO and RASC president Helen Hogg. As
an astronomer, Larsen has also been active in the AAVSO Council and as an important
contributor to its education programs.
The second installment on this topic will be presented as a part of the
AAVSO Centennial Celebration in October, 2011, and will include papers on other
important women in the history of variable star astronomy.
For Session II, to be chaired by AAVSO Director Arne Henden, the
schedule of topics is an equally rich one, ranging from visual sightings of
supernovae that can no longer be seen visually, and photographic discovery of
variable stars, to the development of rigorous theoretical and computational
models of stellar evolution, and the role that variability plays in that
evolutionary process. The evolution of instrumental methods of observing
variable stars will complete this session. Papers will be presented by
astronomer Martin Lunn and English literature expert Lila Rakoczy, astronomer
Linda French, historian Matthew Stanley, astronomer Wayne Osborne, astronomer
Steven Kawaler, and astronomer and former AAVSO President John Percy. This
session will also be continued at the AAVSO Centennial meeting in October.
Titles and abstracts appear on the HAD website at http://had.aas.org/meetings/.
The meeting will also include a few contributed papers on historical
astronomy. Just two—one oral and one poster—were submitted by the
deadline, but additional poster papers may be submitted until the 22 April late
paper deadline at http://aas.org/meetings/
aas218/abstracts.
The AAVSO seventh annual meeting at Harvard College
Observatory, 23 November 1918.
From the
Chair
Jarita
Holbrook, University of Arizona
Most of our members may not know that over
the last year the African Astronomical Society (AfAS) has come into existence!
Discussion for the creation of a society have been in the works for several
decades. With a push from the US-based National Society of Black Physicists
(NSBP), the South African Astronomical Society (SAAO), the International
Astronomical Union (IAU) and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, the formalities
were completed in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in December 2010. Ouagadougou was
where the first IAU Symposium in West Africa, Symposium #277 Tracing the
Ancestry of Galaxies on the Land of our Ancestors (http://www. iaus277.org), occurred in December 2010.
HAD member Hakeem
Oluseyi was elected interim president until the official launch of the Society.
That event will take place on April 13, 2011, in Cape Town, South Africa, as
part of the second IAU Middle Eastern and Africa Regional Meeting, MEARIM II (http://mearim2.saao.ac.za/).
I will be present at this historic launch of AfAS representing NSBP, AAS, and
HAD. More information about AfAS can be found at http://www.africanastronomicalsociety.org.
From the
Vice Chair
Jay M.
Pasachoff, Williams College
As new HAD Vice-Chair, I have inherited
the role of chairing the AAS Obituary Committee and arranging for and editing
obituaries for all deceased AAS members and former members. The obituaries have
appeared in the Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, but that publication is now exclusively online, so
arrangements for making the obituaries public are in flux.
AAS staff members Kevin
Marvel, Judy Johnson, and Crystal Tinch are deciding on final arrangements, with the notion that they would rather get the arrangements right than get
them done quickly. There will continue to be an index and links from the HAD website at http://had.aas.org/obits.html and from the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) (http://www.adsabs.harvard.edu/), but where they are
posted has not yet been decided.
In the electronic
format, we will have room for at least one photo as well as links to web pages.
In the meantime, about two dozen obituaries were finished under Jarita
Holbrook’s watch, and are awaiting publication in the electronic volume 43 of BAAS. Among those are
entries for Jack Eddy, Robert Koch, Tom Van Flandern, Glenn Frye, Earle
Mayfield, Beth Brown, Chi Yuan, Sumner Davis, David Band, Clifford Toner, Henry
Albers, Harry Fulbright, Roy Garstang, George Bowen, Timothy Hawarden, John
Davidson, Andrew Lange, Geoffrey Burbidge, Martin McCarthy, Alan Fiala, Leonard
Searle, Chushiro Hayashi, Sam Roweis, and Frank Low.
Unfortunately, our
friends and colleagues continue to die, and I find a steady, perhaps weekly,
rate of notifications of the need for new obituaries. Among those I have
arranged, and which are in preparation, are those for Brian Marsden, Ben Peery,
John Huchra, Allan Sandage, Mike Lecar, John Oliver, Mal Raff, James Elliot,
Martin Pomerantz, Leif Robinson, and Adriaan Blaauw. We still need writers of
obituaries for Tom Ahrens and Donald Hunten. Any volunteers?
All prospective
obituary authors receive guidelines and a link to John Lankford’s harangue
calling for essential information about deceased astronomers to be preserved
for future historians. See his “A Crisis in Documentation: The Decline of the
Obituary as a Source for the History of Modern Astronomy” at http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1984BAAS...16..560L. Its publication led directly to the AAS Council’s
decision to publish obituaries of all deceased AAS members.
Does anyone have AAS
directories more than ten years old? They would be helpful to me.
From the
Secretary-Treasurer
Joseph
S. Tenn, Sonoma State University
Some readers may recall my quiz in the
last issue of HAD News. Among
other questions I asked the largest number of historical papers ever presented
at a AAS meeting. The answer was 33, at the Chicago meeting in May 1999. Well,
records were made to be broken. We had an astounding 38 papers presented in
Seattle in January. This was in no small part due to Wayne Orchiston and his
contingent from James Cook University in Australia, the presenters of 14 of
those papers.
The HAD Survey
brought the welcome news that most HAD members are rather satisfied with the
Division’s recent activities, plus many useful suggestions. See Ozzie Osborn’s
summary on this page. In response I have added a list of other organizations
involved in historical astronomy to the HAD website. Other responses include
Greg Good’s article on page 4 explaining that the AIP Center for the History of
Physics is already performing some of the actions proposed to HAD and Jim
Lattis’s on the doings of WGPAH (page 5).
In other news, the
HAD Prize Committee is busy studying the work of eight distinguished nominees
in order to choose one to receive the 2012 LeRoy E. Doggett Prize for
Historical Astronomy.
I am also adding more
information—links to photos and articles on early AAS meetings—to
the history of the AAS on the HAD website.
|
Results of
the HAD Survey
Wayne
“Ozzie” Osborn, Central Michigan U.
HAD has about 300 members, including not
only astronomers but also historians, archivists, educators and others. To
learn how well HAD is serving this diverse group, an on-line survey of members
was conducted this past February.
Below is a summary of
the results. Feel free to draw your own conclusions and send them, and any
other comments, to any HAD officer. We thank the 73 members who took time to
answer the survey. The response rate was satisfactory, but we point out that the relatively small numbers imply sampling errors larger than in typical polls.
Overall satisfaction
with Division activities was rated 4.2 out of 5. All current activities
(newsletter, meetings, prizes, web page, and student travel awards) were rated
4.0 or higher. We see this as saying we should continue carrying out these
activities and not make major changes. As we had hoped, many
respondents suggested additional things that the Division might engage in.
Those mentioned more than once were organizing another cultural astronomy
school, engaging in more public outreach, working more closely with the AAS’s
Working Group on Preservation of Astronomical Heritage on saving instruments and
historical papers, having more HAD-organized field trips with our meetings,
increasing HAD visibility by improving our booth, and improving our relations
with other organizations, such as the Antique Telescope Society, Notre Dame
Conferences, other AAS divisions, the American Physical Society Forum on
History of Physics, and foreign societies. Thirty-four percent
of the respondents had attended three or more HAD meetings in the last five
years, and another 45% had attended one or two. As context, in the five year
window 2007-11 there were five official HAD meetings, all held jointly with
winter AAS meetings, in Seattle, Austin, Long Beach, Washington, and Seattle
again. Two-thirds of respondents reported a desire to attend more meetings, and
it seems that the lack of geographical and time-of-year diversity impedes
participating in HAD meetings by some. No fewer than 39 members wrote in
reasons for attending fewer meetings than they would like. Fifteen percent of
these reported that the location of the meeting was an important factor in
deciding whether to attend, usually opting to do so only when the meeting
location was reasonably nearby. Thirteen percent said the early January meeting
time of the winter AAS meeting made attendance difficult or impossible. The other commonly
mentioned factor for lack of regular attendance was the cost of attending
(33%). A significant fraction of members said they must pay all or most of the
cost to attend out of their own pockets. Several others said that having HAD
meet in conjunction with the AAS was the only way they could achieve support to
attend HAD (but a few said that this has produced conflicts between the HAD
sessions and other scheduled AAS activities of interest). Most respondents
favored having HAD continue to meet at winter AAS meetings, but nearly 40%
would like to see half the meetings be at other locations and times. Meeting
from time to time with other groups of similar interest was mentioned by some.
There was almost no support for HAD trying to organize a meeting on its own.
Most respondents
(85%) are AAS members, as are 88% of all HAD members. One-third of the
respondents are retired; by comparison 23% of our members have emeritus
membership (so it seems retirees have more time to fill out surveys!). About
33% identified themselves as historians, educators or other professionals
rather than as physical scientists. Survey respondents are from the East Coast
(36%), West Coast (18%), South (6%), other U.S. (33%), and abroad (7%, mostly
in Canada). Perhaps HAD attendance of those who live in the country’s interior
tends to be low because most recent meetings have been on the two coasts.
NBLA Director Joe Anderson and CHP Director Greg Good. |
History of Astronomy at the AIP
Greg
Good, Director
Center
for History of Physics
The American Institute of Physics (the umbrella
organization that includes the American Astronomical Society, American Physical
Society, and eight similar
organizations) supports two distinct history programs: the Center for History
of Physics (CHP) and the Niels Bohr Library and Archives (NBLA). These programs
can serve HAD members in a variety of ways.
Among the functions of NBLA is the preservation of
AIP’s Member Societies’ records. In the last year, the library has accepted a
new batch of material from AAS related to Society matters. We now have 168
linear feet of AAS records [including HAD archives] in the collection, along
with 21 cassette tapes and 3 films.
The library is also an information clearinghouse and
maintains and constantly expands the International Catalog of Sources (ICOS), a
worldwide union catalog of individual scientists’ manuscript collections: their
letters, notebooks, and other important papers. (Looking for Edwin Hubble’s
letters to colleagues? Check ICOS). NBLA does not usually accept the papers of
individual scientists, but we do help to find an appropriate home for such
collections.
In addition, the Library cares for a growing
collection of 18,000 titles, focused on the physical sciences – including
astronomy – of the 19th and 20th centuries—as well as 30,000
photographs, more than 1,000 oral history interviews, a number of institutional
histories, and more. For example, you can find photos of astronomers at http://photos.aip.org/index.jsp or read transcripts of oral history interviews with
astronomers (http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/).
In 2010, the CHP online exhibits received more than
1,100,000 visits. “Cosmic Journey” (http://www.aip.org/history/cosmology/) by Norriss S. Hetherington and W. Patrick McCray
provides an expansive discussion of the history of scientific cosmology. The
Center also organizes conferences and other programs. We are working with Ozzie
Osborne and AAS to preserve astronomical glass-plate negatives. Two other
societies (APS and AGU) have expressed interest in developing systematic,
ongoing oral history programs. The Center for History of Physics will work with
any Member Society to explore its ideas regarding activities and projects
having to do with history.
That does not mean we can take on all ideas. Our staff
is small. Historic preservation of old observatories is a good idea, but beyond
our expertise. We won’t be taking thousands of glass-plate negatives, either,
since our space is limited. We do address educational issues, for example
posting syllabi of historical courses. We are remodeling this part of our web
site in 2011, so wait a while before sending your syllabi to us!
In the fall of 2011, the Center for History of Physics
and the Niels Bohr Library and Archives will organize a one-day workshop for
Member Society officers and volunteers interested in encouraging historical
activities in their societies. To get on the workshop list, contact me.
What is
WGPAH?
Jim
Lattis, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Chair,
WGPAH
All scientific disciplines take an interest in their
historical development, but astronomers have especially strong interests and
rich traditions in this respect: History typically finds important roles in the
teaching of astronomy and in public outreach; many astronomers have themselves
made significant scholarly contributions to the history of their field; and
historical studies have been and are increasingly relevant to scientific
questions of interest to working astronomers. Hence, one of the divisions of
the AAS is the Historical Astronomy Division.
It is less well known that the AAS Council has
established a working group to bring together expertise on issues related to
historically significant sites, instruments, documents, and other materials
related to the history of astronomy, collectively conceived as “astronomical
heritage.” Working groups, according to the AAS bylaws, “may hold meetings,
identify problem areas, and take such actions as are necessary for the purpose
of coordinating and aiding in the general purposes of the Society.” Our Working
Group on the Preservation of Astronomical Heritage, established in 2007, is one of these.
HAD and WGPAH, despite considerable overlap in
interests and membership, are organizationally separate from each other, with
the working group reporting directly to the AAS Council. Working group members
(excepting the Chair) need not be AAS members or affiliates, although the
majority of WGPAH members are. This structure allows the working group to
include expertise that is not easily found in the AAS membership, such as
curatorial, archival, archaeological, or other skills. The twelve members
of the working group are “charged with developing and disseminating procedures,
criteria and priorities for identifying, designating, and preserving
astronomical structures, instruments, and records so that they will continue to
be available for astronomical and historical research, for the teaching of
astronomy, and for outreach to the general public.”
The working group has no funding and no staff aside
from administrative support from the AAS office. Fortunately we do have
impressive resources: the knowledge and experience of our members. In practice,
the working group acts as a source of expertise and advice for the Council, as
a liaison with other organizations in appropriate areas, and as a point of
contact for inquiries on issues of historical preservation. In addition, the
working group can endorse and even undertake initiatives that the members think
are important.
Current composition of the working group, as well as
other information, can be found at its web page: http://members.aas.org/comms/wgpah.cfm.
The working group members represent specified specialties: archives,
instruments, observational data, working observatories, historical
observatories, history of astronomy, and archaeoastronomy. The working group
typically meets at the annual HAD meeting, and submits an annual report to the
Council.
The working group has undertaken several different
projects since its formation. One, at the request of the AAS Council, was a
study of the current conditions and status of the editorial archives of the Astrophysical
Journal. This resulted in a report to
the Council with recommendations covering the physical disposition of the
archival materials and guidelines for editorial and refereeing confidentiality.
The project’s recommendations were influential in bringing about changes to
policies for AAS journals on the period of time referee reports and editorial
correspondence must remain confidential and unavailable to historians.
Recently the working group has been planning to
convene a workshop of specialists on the preservation of historical
astronomical data with the goal of compiling and publishing guidelines,
techniques, and resources to encourage and assist in the preservation and
accessibility of, for example, photographic scientific information. A proposal
for funding that workshop, prepared and submitted with the assistance of the
AAS, is currently under consideration by NSF.
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|
The
Osterbrock Prize Lecture
Nathan
Sivin, University of Pennsylvania
Editor’s Note: Professor
Sivin has generously provided HAD News with a copy of the remarks he made upon receiving the
Donald E. Osterbrock Book Prize in Seattle. As reported in our last issue, the
prize was awarded to him for Granting the Seasons: The Chinese Astronomical
Reform of 1280, With a Study of Its Many Dimensions and an Annotated
Translation of Its Records (New York: Springer, 2009).
When I was a graduate
student in the history of science, it was a straightforward field. There was
one single history of astronomy, which began with Babylonian clay tablets and
Greek geniuses, and progressed to the present day. Every year or two or three
there would be an article about the exotic astronomy of somewhere else, but
astronomers who lacked a taste for the exotic had no reason to read them. We
divided the actors on the historical stage into Great Men and losers.
Everyone—or almost everyone—assumed that there was no point in
learning about anything but right answers.
We learned that the
main line had an odd discontinuity in the middle, since between about A.D. 200
and 600 Europeans pretty much lost their ability to make exact observations,
keep elaborate technical records, and do complex calculations. They needed the
better part of a thousand years to recover. Luckily, the story went, the Middle
East preserved the European records intact until the time came to hand them
back. We thought of the Islamic world as a kind of faithful custodial sidekick,
more or less a Tonto to Europe’s Lone Ranger.
As more and more
historians became fascinated by traditions outside Europe, and learned the
languages needed to study them, the picture came to look very different. The
long evolution of occidental astronomy, far from being the norm, was the odd
one out, ideal for studying dysfunction. That was because of that mass rejection
of classical learning in the middle of it, and, later, the West’s extreme
dependence, first on Islamic learning for over 400 years and then on documents
from Byzantium, as it slowly regained the world level, and after that the great
speed with which it accelerated to the forefront.
A little over twenty
years ago, I pestered my colleagues in various parts of the world to find out
how many specialists there were on the history of Chinese science and medicine,
defined as people who published research using primary sources or artifacts. It
turned out that in 1988 there were roughly a thousand, and that number has been
growing since. What they study is the record of nearly 2500 years’
uninterrupted work in computational astronomy, cosmology, and (rarely) astrology.
There in China, in other words, not in Western Europe, is the long unbroken
sweep of history. A thousand, or by now perhaps 1500, researchers have more
than enough to do. But given the cascade of publications on this tradition from
China, Japan, Europe, and North America since 1980, we finally have a
defensible idea of what that evolution was like. Chen Meidong’s three ingenious
surveys of astronomical history published between 1995 and 2003 have replaced
the 50-year-old tentative exploration by Joseph Needham.
There are also many
historians of Islamic astronomy, a number who study Japan and Korea, and a
handful who have worked on India. Their writings give us a very rough sketch of
an overall picture. In that picture, the beginnings lie in the Babylonian
world, the Greek achievements were an important but transitory phase, and the
focus then shifted for centuries back to the Middle East. It served as a
melting pot not only for its own ancient traditions and innovations from Persia
and elsewhere, but for new understandings and techniques from India, China, and
early Europe. Then from about the year 1000 on, Europeans learned about the
intellectual riches of the Muslim world. It was the cosmopolitan mixture in
Islam of methods and ideas that made possible the studies of European
scholastics, those of the table-makers, and then those of the mathematical
cosmologists from Copernicus on. In other words, the history of astronomy has
turned out to be as pan-Eurasian as that of the other sciences.
Not only is the
Chinese side of the story uninterrupted, but it turns out to be based on a
different set of choices from all the possible ways of thinking quantitatively
about the sky. For example, its degrees were each based on one day’s mean solar
motion, so there were 365¼ of them, rather than 360, in a circle. Some
historians have fixed ideas about the superiority of 360, but over many
centuries the Chinese choice turned out to be just as convenient. Their
approach to quantification was numerical rather than geometrical, closer to the
design of present-day computer programs than to Ptolemy’s approach. Still, from
the 11th century on, some Chinese astronomers began developing their tools in
the direction of spherical trigonometry.
Their numerical
approach led to many concepts not at all like those of Europe. For instance,
since they had no reason to picture a precession of the equinoxes, or a
rotation of the equatorial pole around the pole of the ecliptic, they accounted
for the same phenomena with a concept they called the Annual Difference (suicha). This quantity was the difference between the sun’s
position at the end of a sidereal year and a tropical year. And, since there
were 365¼ degrees in a circle, this was a gap in time as well as in
space. The numerical results, and the rigor of the model, were the same as with
the Western approach.
Over more than two
millennia, many documents were naturally lost, but what survives is still
extremely rich. There is hardly a question you can ask that you can’t find an
answer to. The Chinese records are exactly dated and fully set out, precise
when there is a reason for them to be, and—when there isn’t—often
discursive and reflective.
In the third century
B.C., China became a centrally governed empire, and soon became larger than all
of Europe. One of the cornerstones of imperial ritual was the issuance of an
ephemeris, an almanac that predicted the year’s celestial phenomena. That act
of “granting the seasons” quickly reached an exactitude that far surpassed the
needs of agriculture and bureaucracy. But because its main purpose was to show
symbolically the state’s control of time, alongside its dominion of space,
there was always motivation to improve.
For well over 2000
years the state maintained a technical bureaucracy to observe and record the
phenomena, work out ways to predict them, interpret the astrological meaning of
unpredictable events, write the annual almanacs, and publish them. Its
astronomical bureau accumulated records of observations that became an
increasingly powerful collection of data for improving prediction. For
instance, the system of computation adopted for official use in the year 1280
tested its method of solar eclipse prediction against, among other data,
records of 71 eclipses observed from 720 B.C. on.
Each system was a
series of steps that a low-level official with no expertise in astronomy could
follow to compute an annual ephemeris. The ephemerides were somewhat like
Ptolemy’s Handy Tables, or the handbooks just beginning to be printed in
Renaissance Europe, or the zij of
the Muslim world. The historical record was so voluminous because it was
normal, when important predictions failed, to replace the whole system of
prediction instead of mending it. In some dynasties it became usual to order up
a new system to mark the reign of a new emperor, or to advertise a political
new deal. Over 2500 years, we have records of roughly 200 astronomical systems,
and reasonably meaty information about half that many. The government
officially adopted roughly fifty of them.
Compared with the
lonely efforts of Copernicus or the difficulties of the noble Tycho Brahe in
meeting the payroll of his small technical staff, this was a large-scale
enterprise with a large budget. Seven civil servants of substantial rank planned
the project of 1280. It also included 16 administrators, 13 observers, 14 human
computers, 4 timekeepers, 2 instructors, 2 editors, 15 printers, 11 clerks, and
44 students. On top of that there were consultants, and platoons of artisans
who built the new buildings and instruments for the project. The fact that
there were so many administrators tells us that China was a true bureaucracy
long before Westerners even dreamt of that organizational form.
Another sign of a
civil-service mentality is the great detail of the records that the government
kept. The final report of the 1280 project submitted to the throne and archived
in the astronomical bureau amounted to 105 chapters. A chapter was no more
precise a measure in China than in the West, but 105 of them could easily
amount to over 2000 pages. Nearly half of that was a detailed empirical study
of the apparent motions of the five planets. What survived the wars,
cataclysms, and revolutions to the present day are a summary in four chapters
published, as usual, in the dynastic history. That was an enormous loss, but
the fact remains that the four chapters themselves are a highly detailed
account of the system of prediction and the methods used to test its accuracy.
They amount to 300 pages in English translation.
In addition to
computational astronomy, the standard histories included observations of
phenomena that were difficult or impossible to forecast. For instance, a recent
compilation of comet observations drawn from these sources includes every
return of Halley’s comet for more than 2000 years. The observers didn’t know
that they were all the same comet, but neither did anyone else before the 17th
century. Datings of supernovas and the decay of their bright light have made it
possible to identify their remaining radiation today. Many of you are familiar
with the registers of solar and lunar eclipse records from the same sources and
those of other civilizations by Richard Stephenson, John Steele, and others.
Some of the early records went far beyond astronomy; for example, over the same
period we know the dates of a great many large-magnitude earthquakes at many
locations.
Acquaintance with the
history of non-Western astronomy can also help us in thinking about what
originally filled what are now blanks in European history. For instance, my
colleague Christopher Cullen has pointed out that Ptolemy’s approach to
computation was so comprehensive and sophisticated that the detailed work of
most of his predecessors in the Greek-speaking world is lost. Nor do we know
the circumstances of Ptolemy’s work.
On the other hand, if
we look at the comparably innovative Zhang Heng (78-139), who died about the
time the Almagest was written, we can trace in detail what circumstances led to
change. This is because of the minute documentation customary for affairs of
the imperial court, and because, given the nature of the bureaucracy, people
who proposed change of any kind had to argue for it, normally in writing.
My examples come from
China, but they could just as well have come from other astronomical
traditions. Being a specialist makes it possible to achieve understanding in
depth, but it can also encourage ignorance about the rest of human endeavor. If
we want to get away from the worn-out myth of a pure European tradition of
science and learn more about how astronomical actually evolved; if instead of
idly speculating about the possibilities of astronomy we want to know the full
range of what did happen; if we want to take advantage of the widest range of
ancient records to solve current problems, it isn’t a bad idea to take the
world as our unit of exploration.
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Transits of
Venus Papers Sought
Hilmar W. Duerbeck, James
Cook University
Chair,
IAU Transits of Venus Working Group
The IAU Commission 41
Transits of Venus Working Group (http://www.historyofastronomy.org)
is pleased to announce that the March 2012 issue of the Journal of
Astronomical History and Heritage
will be a special issue devoted to papers on historical Venus transits.
Interested authors should contact editor Wayne Orchiston (wayne.orchiston@jcu.edu.au),
associate editor Hilmar Duerbeck (hilmar@uni-muenster.de), or associate editor Joseph Tenn (joe.tenn@ sonoma.edu); manuscripts will be due in October, 2011. See the
journal’s website at http://www.jcu.edu.au/school/mathphys/astronomy
/jah2/index.shtml for more about
the JAHH. Note: starting in 2012
the journal will be published online, and it will be free via ADS.
Austin Meeting Next January
The Historical
Astronomy Division will meet once in 2012, as part of the AAS meeting in Austin
8–12 January. There will be two HAD Special Sessions.
Jay Pasachoff and
William Sheehan are organizing a session on “Transits of Venus: Looking
Forward, Looking Back.” They point out that the 6 June 2012 transit of Venus
will represent the last chance to observe one of these rare events from Earth
until the next pair starts in 2117. This year’s transit will be extremely
advantageous as almost all of the most populated areas of the Earth will be
able to view at least some of it.
This session is
devoted to some aspects of the history of transits, but especially those
phenomena significant for current astronomical and astrophysical research.
Historically, the
transits of Venus were singularly important both in astronomy and in the
geographical exploration of our own planet. This importance was reflected in the
massive preparations and far-flung expeditions in the 18th century to better
measure the solar parallax. The 19th century transits played out against a
background of rivalries among the great European powers, which were then at
their height but sliding toward the Great War of 1914–1918. The 2012
transit offers an opportunity to revisit the important expeditions of the past
and to engage in “experimental archaeology,” the reconstruction of past
observations to the extent possible using historical instruments and techniques
and/or observing from the same locations used by earlier observers.
However, the main
topic of this session is to review through the history of the transits a number
of critical problems that remain relevant and can be addressed by modern
high-resolution observations from Earth and space. One of these is the detailed
profiling of the atmosphere of Venus. Another is the unique opportunity
transits of Venus (and Mercury) afford as local analogues to exoplanet transits
across their parent stars, which are the focus of many contemporary
astrophysical investigations and space missions whose goals are to understand
the prevalence and structure of planetary systems very different from our own
solar system. In short, though transits are often said to be of strictly
historical interest, since the Halleyan solar parallax method has long since
been superseded, we hope to show that transits of Venus continue to be of great
importance to astronomers and astrophysicists working at the cutting edge of
important problems of today.
Marc Rotenberg is
organizing a session on “Funding Astronomy post-World War II.” He summarizes
the session:
Thanks to the
establishment of the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration in the United States, and various agencies in Europe
and Asia, there has been a massive influx of government funds into national and
international astronomy during the last sixty-five years. At the same time,
traditional sources of support, such as the Carnegie Institution of Washington,
have continued to find their own niches in the new world of patronage. This
session will explore the impact of the new patterns of patronage on astronomy
in the United States and elsewhere.
The Astronomical
& Astrophysical Society of America, meeting in Ottawa, August 1911.
Old Yerkes
Photos Now Online
Judith
Dartt, University of Chicago Library
Yerkes Observatory,
splendidly situated on Wisconsin’s Lake Geneva, was formally dedicated in 1897.
The celebration, which marked the opening, was held the week of October 18
through 22. In the observatory’s programme of
dedication, the preliminary event listed is a conference
of Astronomers and Astrophysicists, the first held by the group, which was the
forerunner of the American Astronomical Society. See http://had.aas.org/aashistory/7meetings.html.
During this meeting,
prominent astronomers addressed varied topics of interest. Dr. Sherburne
W. Burnham, for example, used Yerkes’ new refractor telescope to
show the audience a selection of double stars. And, Carl Runge,
director of the Spectroscopic Laboratory of the Technische Hochschule,
travelled from Hanover, Germany to deliver a talk on “Oxygen in the Sun.”
Attendees, many of
whom inscribed their names in the observatory’s guest book,
assembled in the magnificent
building the morning of Thursday, October 21. With the president and
trustees of the University of Chicago, the donor Charles Tyson
Yerkes, and the newly-appointed staff, they witnessed the director George Ellery
Hale, set the formal ceremony of the observatory’s presentation and
acceptance in motion.
Though unfinished at
time of the dedication, the grounds
of the new observatory were laid out by the well-known landscape designer John
Charles Olmsted. The design
of the beautiful building was envisioned by the architect Henry Ives Cobb. The
manufacturer Warner & Swasey constructed the 90-foot observatory
dome, under which a fearless, though unnamed, workforce
installed the components of Yerkes’ 40-inch
refractor. The largest of its kind, the telescope had been fitted with
lenses,
which the renowned instrument maker Alvan Graham
Clark, and his assistant, Carl Lundin, had polished and perfected
from enormous glass disks cast by the optical works Mantois of Paris.
George Ellery Hale
and his staff were the first, but by no means the last of a line of
extraordinary men and women
who would inform the observatory’s life and purpose. The documents created
during these years describe in detail, not only the appearance of celestial
objects they observed, but also the rich terrestrial
environment in which they worked and lived.
In 2008, many of Yerkes’ records were
transferred from the observatory to the Special Collections Research Center
of the University of Chicago Library. With the generous support of the John
Crerar Foundation, over 2,200 photographs (glass plate negatives, lantern
slides, and prints) have been digitized, and are now available at http://photofiles.lib.uchicago.edu/
as part of the Library’s Archival
Photographic Files Digital Collection. There images of almost
everything mentioned above may be found.
Thank You,
Donors
Joseph
S. Tenn, Sonoma State University
The Historical Astronomy Division depends
greatly on donations. The LeRoy E. Doggett Prize for Historical Astronomy and
Donald E. Osterbrock Book Prize for Historical Astronomy are funded entirely by
contributions.
While donations in
the 2010 calendar year to the HAD Fund and to the Doggett Prize Fund were
fairly typical, the total amount contributed to HAD accounts took a giant leap,
with more than $15,000 contributed to the new Osterbrock Prize Fund.
Thank you Gene
Ammarell, Brenda & Tom Corbin, David H. DeVorkin, Thomas L. Gandet, Martha
Goodway, Arnold M. Heiser, Marie R. Lukac, Charles J. Peterson, Woodruff T.
Sullivan, III, and Curtis Wilson for donating to the HAD fund in 2010.
Donating to the
Doggett Prize fund were Irving W. Lindenblad, Owen Gingerich, Alan D. Fiala,
Michael J. Crowe, E.S. Jackson, Kenneth Rumstay, Marie R. Lukac, David H.
DeVorkin, Stephen C. McCluskey, and Owen Gingerich.
Most donors to the
new Osterbrock Prize fund were thanked in the last two newsletters, but the
following contributed during the last part of the year: Brenda & Tom
Corbin, David H. DeVorkin, Reginald J. Dufour, Owen Gingerich, L.M. Hobbs,
David E. Hogg, Tim Hunter, David C. Jenner, Donald H. Liebenberg, George S.
Mumford, William S. Penhallow, Elizabeth Roemer, Daniel J. Schroeder, and
Robert F. Wing.
Thank you to all. Our
long-term goal is to make each prize self-sustaining, with costs covered by
interest. We haven’t reached this goal yet, but we are on our way!
|
Minutes of
HAD Business Meeting
10 January
2011, Seattle
I. The
meeting was called to order by chair Thomas Hockey.
The minutes of last year’s meeting,
available online as part of HAD News #76, were approved. Current
(2009–11) officers were introduced.
II. Secretary-Treasurer’s
Report
Joe Tenn reminded those in attendance of
all the information available on the HAD website at http://had.aas.org/. HAD News is now published regularly in April and
October. Submission of short articles, book reviews, and other items of
interest to the membership are encouraged. Deadlines are the equinoxes. Income
and expenditures for the first 11 months of 2010 were announced. Final totals for
the year are posted on p. 11. HAD membership as of December 2010 totaled 304,
including 41 Divisional Affiliate members, who are not members of the AAS.
III. Committee
Reports and ongoing HAD Activities
A. Obituary Committee
Jarita
Holbrook and Jay Pasachoff reported that the writing of obituaries for all AAS
members who passed away during the year was proceeding as planned. Starting in
2011 the BAAS will be an
electronic publication, and it is not clear yet where the obituaries will be
posted. It was made clear that they will be online, and there will be links to
them from both the HAD website and ADS.
B. HAD
Prize Committee
Sara Schechner reported that Nathan Sivin,
the first recipient of the Donald E. Osterbrock Book Prize, would receive the
prize and speak on astronomy in China that afternoon.
Members were asked to nominate individuals
for the Division’s highest honor, the LeRoy E. Doggett Prize for Historical
Astronomy by 15 March 2011.
C. The HAD Booth
Arnold Heiser called for a few additional
volunteers to help staff the HAD booth. It was noted that the booth has become
both a place to recruit new HAD members and also a gathering place for HAD
members during the meetings. Some members called for more eye-catching
decorations for the Booth, and the HAD Committee promised to look into this.
D. The Minibanquet
Joe Tenn reported that local resident
Woody Sullivan had arranged for the fourth annual HAD Minibanquet to be held at
the Asian fusion restaurant Wild Ginger that evening.
IV. The next
HAD Meetings
Thomas Hockey reported that HAD’s next
meeting would be with the AAS and AAVSO in Boston, 22 May 2011, with special
sessions on the history of variable star astronomy organized by Tom Williams.
The meeting after that will be with the AAS winter meeting in Austin in January
2012. He called for volunteers to organize special sessions for the latter
meeting. Several members suggested themes, but only Jay Pasachoff actually
volunteered to organize a special session, on Transit of Venus observations.
V. A
survey of the HAD membership
Joe Tenn reported that the HAD Committee
had decided to survey the membership as to their satisfaction with the
Division’s activities. This would be done online in February.
VI. New Business & News from Members
David DeVorkin called the members’
attention to the forthcoming tenth Notre Dame Conference.
VII. Changing of the Guard
Chair Thomas Hockey introduced the new
members of the HAD Committee who would serve from January 2011 to January 2013:
Chair Jarita Holbrook, Vice Chair Jay Pasachoff, Secretary-Treasurer Joe Tenn,
and committee members Richard Jarrell and Wayne “Ozzie” Osborn. He himself
would remain on the Committee as Past Chair. He then turned over the gavel and
the famous “ich bin HAD” plaque to Jarita.
Treasurer’s Report
|
HAD Account |
|
|
|
Balance
12/31/09 |
|
$14,860.10 |
|
Revenue
2010 |
|
|
|
Dues |
2,162.00 |
|
|
Contributions |
583.00 |
|
|
Interest |
756.95 |
|
|
Revenue |
168.00 .000 |
|
|
Investment
Value Change |
+1,655.72 |
|
|
TOTAL
REVENUE |
5,325.67 |
|
|
Expenses
2010 |
|
|
|
Speakers |
1250.00 |
|
|
Booth |
40.00 |
|
|
Newsletter |
164.49 |
|
|
Fundraising |
73.87 |
|
|
Election |
13.46 |
|
|
AAS fees |
534.18 |
|
|
Affiliate
member fees |
210.00 |
|
|
TOTAL
EXPENSES |
2,286.00 |
|
|
Net
Change 2010 |
|
+3,039.67 |
|
Balance
12/31/10 |
|
$17,899.77 |
|
|
|
|
|
Doggett Prize Fund |
|
|
|
Balance
12/31/09 |
|
$30,598.53 |
|
Revenue
2010 |
|
|
|
Contributions |
623.00 |
|
|
Interest |
997.77 |
|
|
Investment
Value Change |
+2,182.51 |
|
|
TOTAL
REVENUE |
3,803.28 |
|
|
Expenses
2010 |
|
|
|
Honorarium |
1000.00 |
|
|
Recipient’s
travel |
1211.83 |
|
|
AAS fees |
132.71 |
|
|
TOTAL
EXPENSES |
2,344.54 |
|
|
Net
Change 2010 |
|
+1,458.74 |
|
Balance
12/31/10 |
|
$32,057.27 |
|
|
|
|
|
Osterbrock Prize Fund |
|
|
|
Balance
12/31/09 |
|
0.00 |
|
Revenue
2010 |
|
|
|
Contributions |
15,055.00 |
|
|
TOTAL
REVENUE |
15,055.00 |
|
|
Expenses
2010 |
|
|
|
Committee
expenses |
77.80 |
|
|
AAS fees |
4.67 |
|
|
TOTAL
EXPENSES |
82.47 |
|
|
Net
Change 2010 |
|
+14,972.53 |
|
Balance
12/31/10 |
|
$14,972.53 |
Historical Astronomy Division of
the American Astronomical Society
HAD News #78, April 2011, edited by Joe Tenn
Please send contributions for the next issue, comments, etc. to joe.tenn@sonoma.edu
Photo
credits: p. 1: J.S. Tenn, brilliantpictures; p.
2: J. Holbrook, J.M. Pasachoff; p. 3: E. Tenn; W. Wells; p. 4: G. Good; p. 5:
J.S. Tenn; p. 6: J.S. Tenn; p.8: Ball, R.S., et al., Essays in Astronomy (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1900), opp. p. 244. For a color photo see Manchester Art
Gallery; p. 9: Archival Photographic Files, [apf6-04493],
Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library; p. 10: D.
DeVorkin; p. 11: AAVSO.
Wayne Orchiston and some of his past and current JCU students,
Stella Cottam, William Wells, Jefferson Sauter, and John Pearson, at the
Seattle meeting.
Speakers
in the Herschel session in Seattle, January 2011: Front: Thomas Hankins, Woody Sullivan, Marvin Bolt;
Rear: David DeVorkin, Robert W. Smith, Cliff Cunningham, Emily Winterburn.
Nathan
Sivin (right) at the presentation of the first Osterbrock Prize with HAD Prize
Committee Chair Sara Schechner (left) and Irene Osterbrock.
First observation of the transit of Venus by William Crabtree in 1639. From an etching of a 19th century mural by Ford Madox Brown.
Curtis
A. Wilson, the first recipient of HAD’s LeRoy E. Doggett Prize in 1998, has
recently published a new book: The Hill-Brown Theory of the Moon’s Motion:
Its Coming-to-be and Short-lived Ascendancy (1877-1984)