On the Road: Nashville astronomy, Day 1

On Thursday, May 20, I arrived in Nashville, Tennessee, early in the morning, having been invited to come and check out Vanderbilt University’s astronomy activities by Rocky Alvey, director of Vanderbilt’s Dyer Observatory. Rocky has a superb job in that he oversees the observatory’s historical and many outreach activities, the great collections and telescopes housed here, and works with the university’s astronomy department, too. What a marvelous blend of events go on at this institution.

Before heading to the observatory, I trekked to see an old familiar place I hadn’t visited for some years, the Hermitage, home of Andrew Jackson. The house is obviously a major historical site of great national importance and is currently undergoing a substantial renovation. The guided tour of the main house, the reflective moments spent at Jackson’s grave, and the contrast of the magnificence of the plantation (especially given the frontier nature of 1830s “suburban” Nashville) and the stark, dull simplicity of the slave cabins within site of the ornate mansion all made for a significant morning thinking about America’s past.

By noon, I arrived at the observatory and was promptly met by Rocky and by C. R. “Bob” O’Dell, a legend among living American astronomers. We spent quite a long time talking about astronomical history, current research, and E. E. Barnard (1857–1923), the great astronomer who was born in Nashville, who spent so much time here, and whose collections and mementos surrounded us. Bob told many stories about Barnard and his early work on dark nebulae, on photography, on his eclipse expeditions, and more. And Bob discussed his role in getting the Hubble Space Telescope going — he is certainly one of the prime movers who made that historic project happen. Moreover, Bob is the world’s leading expert on what may arguably be the most beloved deep-sky object of all, the Orion Nebula.

Rocky then took me down to the Vanderbilt campus, and we toured the astronomy department, meeting quite a few professors and discussing their research at length. We spoke to David Weintraub, who is finishing a major project that will be a book for Princeton University Press on how astronomers have determined the age of the universe. We talked at great length with Andreas Berlind, who studies large-scale galaxy modeling and wholesale survey data, attempting to understand the correlations. He also is very interested in high-energy cosmic rays. We visited with Kelly Holley-Bockelman, another astronomer who focuses on so-called N-body simulations and large-scale structure, focusing on the merger rates of black holes. It was quite an afternoon filled with heavy-duty astro shop talk.

This morning I start up in earnest with Professor Barnard, searching through many papers, artifacts, and photographs to bring his incredible story back anew to the readers of Astronomy.

Check out all the photos I took during my Nashville trip.