Venus shines to the left of the Great Refractor’s dome atop the Harvard-Smithsonian Observatory. Liz Kruesi photo
I’m back from the
Knight/Kavli Universe Workshop and, whew, it was a whirlwind few days, jam-packed with astronomy lectures and lab visits. Luckily, I love learning about the different areas of astronomy and astrophysics; so much of it is fascinating. And it’s always a pleasure to sit in on a science lecture where the scientist is fully capable of explaining complex ideas at a more basic level.
I left the workshop with some great story ideas (so keep an eye out for those in upcoming issues), and resources. I also had the opportunity to interact with other science journalists and learn about differences (and similarities) at other publications.
What were some of the awesome topics, you ask? Here’s the first of two blogs about some of the information covered at the seminar.
Alison Doane, curator of the glass plate collection at Harvard, shows the results of early photographic technology with this multiple-exposure image of the Moon. Liz Kruesi photo
On the night of June 24, we visited the Harvard-Smithsonian Observatory. For the first half of the visit, we explored the lower levels of the building — where some 525,000 glass photographic plates are stored. Alison Doane, the curator of the glass database, explained the digitization project. (Astronomers used to take photographs of the sky on glass plates. They’re much heavier than paper, which means they won’t move around as you expose them to light from distant objects for long periods of time.) The Harvard-Smithsonian glass plates cover both the Southern and Northern Hemispheres from the years 1885 to 1993. That’s a lot of data.
There’s much more involved in digitizing this collection than I ever could have imagined. And once the project is complete, it will be a fabulous resource for astronomers. Imagine the not-yet-discovered objects that could be hiding in this old data — supernovae, decades of variable stars’ light curves, and Kuiper Belt objects, just to name a few.
Harvard’s “Great Refractor” dates back to 1847. For 20 years, this 15-inch scope held the title of largest in the United States. Liz Kruesi photo
We also got to see the second photograph ever taken of the Moon. Wow.
After our tour of the archives, we headed up to the dome of Harvard’s “Great Refractor.” This 15-inch telescope was built in 1847, and for 20 years was the largest scope in the United States. Unfortunately, it’s not used anymore, but that’s an issue with the dome and not the telescope (the dome gets stuck in the open position ... not good in Massachusetts weather). Such old telescopes are almost as much a work of art as scientific devices. It’s incredible to see the gears and weights associated with the scopes.
That was just a fraction of my time at the workshop. We did quite a lot in just 3 days. I’ll post another blog soon about some of the lectures.