Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from beak.andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for +dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl@andrew.cmu.edu (->+dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr11/tm2b/space/space.dl) (->ota+space.digests) ID ; Tue, 1 May 90 02:09:51 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Tue, 1 May 90 02:09:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V11 #338 SPACE Digest Volume 11 : Issue 338 Today's Topics: Electronic Journal of the ASA, Vol. I, No. X ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 30 Apr 90 15:49:33 GMT From: mephisto!eedsp!chara!asa@rutgers.edu (Astronomical Society of the Atlantic) Subject: Electronic Journal of the ASA, Vol. I, No. X THE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF THE ATLANTIC Volume 1, Number 10 - May 1990 ########################### TABLE OF CONTENTS ########################### * ASA Membership/Article Submission Information * The Mayall Four-Meter Telescope - Don Barry * Did Kepler Fake the Evidence? - Ken Poshedly * A Living Legend: The Alvin Clark Refractor - Alan Fleming ########################### ASA MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION The Electronic Journal of the Astronomical Society of the Atlantic (EJASA) is published monthly by the Astronomical Society of the Atlantic, Inc. The ASA is a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of amateur and professional astronomy and space exploration, and to the social and educational needs of its members. Membership application is open to all with an interest in astronomy and space exploration. Members receive the ASA Journal (hardcopy sent through U.S. Mail), the Astronomical League's REFLECTOR magazine, and may additionally purchase discount subscriptions to SKY & TELESCOPE, ASTRONOMY, DEEP SKY, and TELESCOPE MAKING magazines. For information on membership, contact the Society at: Astronomical Society of the Atlantic (ASA) c/o Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) Georgia State University (GSU) Atlanta, Georgia 30303 U.S.A. asa%chara@gatech.edu or asa@chara.uucp ASA BBS: (404) 985-0408, 300/1200 Baud. or telephone the Society recording at (404) 264-0451 to leave your address and/or receive the latest Society news. ASA Officers and Council - President - Don Barry Vice President - Bill Bagnuolo Secretary - Ken Poshedly Treasurer - Alan Fleming Board of Advisors - Edward Albin, Jim Bitsko, Bill Hartkopf Council - Jim Bitsko, Julian Crusselle, Toni Douglas, Eric Greene, Larry Klaes, Becky Long, Max Mirot, Paul Pirillo, Patti Provost, Michael Wiggs ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS - Article submissions on astronomy and space exploration to the EJASA are most welcome. Please send your on-line articles in ASCII format to Larry Klaes, EJASA Editor, at the following net addresses or the above Society addresses: klaes@wrksys.enet.dec.com or - ...!decwrl!wrksys.enet.dec.com!klaes or - klaes%wrksys.dec@decwrl.enet.dec.com or - klaes%wrksys.enet.dec.com@uunet.uu.net You may also use the above net addresses for EJASA backissue requests, letters to the editor, and ASA membership information. Please be certain to include either a network or regular mail address where you can be reached, a telephone number, and a brief biographical sketch. DISCLAIMER - Submissions are welcome for consideration. Articles submitted, unless otherwise stated, become the property of the Astronomical Society of the Atlantic. Though the articles will not be used for profit, they are subject to editing, abridgment, and other changes. Copying or reprinting of the EJASA, in part or in whole, is encouraged, provided clear attribution is made to the Astronomical Society of the Atlantic, the Electronic Journal, and the author(s). This Journal is Copyright (c) 1990 by the Astronomical Society of the Atlantic. THE MAYALL FOUR-METER TELESCOPE by Don Barry Since 1968, the Mayall four-meter (158-inch) telescope atop Kitt Peak in Arizona has been the premier instrument of optical astronomy in the continental United States. In this article, first of a series, I will relate the story of a week I spent conducting research with the telescope. Later articles will describe Kitt Peak itself and touch on some other major astronomical facilities. My first exposure to the Mayall instrument was through the pictures of ASTRONOMY magazine. Because it was the first large instrument designed to take pictures of a wide field of view, its photographs of celestial objects have dominated popular astronomical literature for years. I arrived in Tucson on a Thursday evening in August of 1988 with my thesis advisor, Hal McAlister of Georgia State University, and Otto Franz of Lowell Observatories in Flagstaff, Arizona. Hal had been granted five nights time on the instrument to make measurements of close binary star systems with the method of speckle interferometry. Unlike the five-meter (two hundred-inch) Mount Palomar behemoth, the Mayall telescope is operated by the U.S. government for the benefit of all American astronomers. Time on the telescope is awarded by merit of proposal, as determined by review by scientific peers. Therefore, this is the largest continental telescope which most American astronomers can aspire to use. Friday morning we left for the mountain. Some eighty kilometers (fifty miles) outside Tucson, the Kitt Peak access road diverges from the highway, pointing straight at an enormous peak, capped by several white domes. Suddenly, as if in a plane, our trail soared upwards from the desert, mounted by three hundred-meter (one thousand-foot) intervals as the desert landscape was replaced in shades by more succulent scrub brush. After nineteen tortuous kilometers (twelve miles), we emerged at the top ridge. Before us lay the domes of the seventeen major instruments scattered around the peak. Here are the storied instruments of astronomy: The 1.5-meter (sixty-inch) McMath solar telescope, the 2.5-meter (one hundred-inch) McGraw-Hill reflector, the 2.25-meter (ninety-inch) Steward observatory, the NRAO Submillimeter Radio Facility, the four-meter (158-inch) Mayall, and numerous smaller telescopes. The few astronomers walking around looked like the Lilliputians from Jonathan Swift's GULLIVER'S TRAVELS next to their large domes. The Mayall telescope is situated ten stories off the ground, in a nine-story high dome. We took our carts of computers and cameras up a large cargo elevator to its top, then squeezed ourselves into a small cage elevator for the final trip up to the telescope. Nestled in a massive three hundred ton horseshoe mount, surrounded by access ladders and platforms over three stories of floor levels, the telescope almost appeared diminutive in its shell. We walked directly underneath the instrument, then out a ladder into the instrument room, which occupies the rear of the telescope tube itself. Our camera went here, at the Cassegrain focus of the instrument. In this room, perhaps, the difference between my past observing and this experience was most marked. Instead of working over or next to a telescope, I was absorbed by it, standing with three others in the place where a "normal" telescope has room for only an eyepiece. Beneath us was a large circus net, protecting us from a fall over nine meters (thirty feet) to the floor. Eight stories above, the five hundred ton white dome seemed like that of some gigantic planetarium; but here, the stars were far on the other side. Nightfall came to the accompaniment of a vivid thunderstorm. A few morose astronomers gathered in the snack bar near the visitors' dormitories to swap stories and discuss their observing agendas. Outside, the desert floor 1.6 kilometers (one mile) below glowed faintly, while lightning danced downwards from clouds on a level with us. Clear spots in the sky soon appeared; by midnight, it was time to start our work. In our control room, the instrumentation resembled that of some modern nuclear reactor. Panels of indicator lights glowed softly, showing the health and state of the telescope, while buttons and knobs and a control computer allowed almost every instrument adjustment to be performed remotely. Above these panels, the telescope was almost invisible through glass windows in the darkness of the dome. Our own equipment occupied a line of desks. Three computers and a host of specialized electronics controlled our camera, processing the data and saving it for later research. Hal set out an ambitious observing program for the remainder of the night, and soon we were in the routine of observing. Our telescope operator, a member of the Kitt Peak staff, was Dean Hudek, a veteran of the facility. As Hal selected a new object to be studied, Dean was responsible for programming the telescope's control computer with coordinates. Dean also manually activated the fast motion motors, whose control was not entrusted to the computers. Each object came into view on a small television screen, and was then centered manually atop a blinking indicator. At a keystroke, a mirror at the rear of the telescope was moved so the new star now shone into our camera. Almost two thousand stop-motion pictures of the star per minute, all at extremely high magnification, arrived for processing. Simultaneously, these pictures were fed onto videotape for archival, and analyzed by two computers to reveal the presence of possible companion stars. After only sixty to ninety seconds per star, we stored our accumulated data on computer and embarked toward the next object. In our acclimatized, well-lit control room, we were almost removed from the world of the telescope. To view out, we could wander into the open part of the dome itself to see a slice of sky through the slit, or else descend via an elevator to the glassed-in gallery level three stories beneath, or via two elevators to ground level. Inside the dome, the telescope moved with complete silence and precision in the darkness, while the dome shifted with low rumblings to follow it. The catwalk outside the dome, two stories beneath control room level, is seldom used now since the death there of astronomer Mark Aronson in a freak accident in 1986. We did manage to wander out onto the catwalk, led by our operator, to check the humidity one foggy night. Ten stories up, the catwalk juts out from the cylin- drical walls of the building, with open steel mesh - and lots of air - between one's toes and the ground. Immediately above, the moving part of the dome begins, arcing away from the vertical lines of the building beneath. The stars went by quickly. Over the five nights, we observed at least five hours on each, seeing relatively clear skies every morning and two evenings. Along the way, we managed to make a brief diversion to look at the planet Mars in one of its infrequent close oppositions, and to record data to later enable us to image the surface of the red giant star Betelgeuse in the constellation of Orion the Hunter. We also entertained guests during part of Saturday evening's observing. Our friend Ralph Buice and two of his guests made the journey from Atlanta, Georgia, just to get a taste of Kitt Peak experience. The Moon, in full phase when we arrived, experienced a partial eclipse that first Friday evening, and then waned each subsequent night. The final evening of the run, the Sun "set" gloriously in a sky of the most transparent blue. With no Moon or evening clouds in sight, the stars shone down from the inky blackness of the Universe. In the control room, the combination of clear skies and a freshly aluminized mirror led Hal to order more and more difficult targets. Excitedly, we measured objects a magnitude fainter than had been recorded with a newer, fresher camera just two years previously. That final night, over 190 objects passed under scrutiny, and when morning came, the tally for the week's run had reached nearly six hundred measurements, ready to be archived for our team's research and that of later scientists. On the trip home, I thought about modern astronomical practice. Even in this era of computerized, automated astronomy, no other field has anything to compare to the mystique of an astronomical observing run. Atop majestic Kitt Peak, in a cathedral of astronomy, it was easy to feel a step closer to the sky. About the Author - Don Barry, ASA President, is a researcher and Ph.D. candidate at the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA), Georgia State University. An active amateur and professional astronomer, his amateur interests include telescope making, antique instruments, and amateur-professional collaborative projects, while his professional interests include optical interferometry, binary astrometry, and innovative instrumentation. Don is also the author of the following EJASA articles: "Astronomy Week in Georgia" (August 1989) "Profiles in Astronomy: Albert Whitford" (September 1989; an interview with Edmund Dombrowski and Sethanne Howard) "Alar Toomre: Galactic Spirals, Bridges, and Tails" (October 1989; an interview with Edmund Dombrowski and Sethanne Howard) "Observing the Wreaths of Winter" (December 1989) DID KEPLER FAKE THE EVIDENCE? by Ken Poshedly Remember when you knew you were right in high school science class but could not prove it, so you tweaked a little here and fudged a little there to make your experiment come out right? Well, you were not alone. It seems that this is a custom of science that goes back a long time - at least four hundred years! In a recent article carried by the NEW YORK TIMES newspaper wire service, it was revealed that Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), termed the "Father of Modern Astronomy", sort of "made up" some things to convince the scientific community of his time that his theory, which placed the Sun at the center of the solar system, was true. William H. Donahue, a science historian from Santa Fe, New Mexico, found that a chart Kepler prepared purporting to show that the planets travel in elliptical orbits and not in circles around the Sun - a theory held by the Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) - was based on Kepler's own theory. Kepler stated in his 1609 book des- cribing his calculations that the theory was confirmed by independent calculations of the planets' positions. Instead, Donahue said, Kepler arrived the results by using calculations based on the theory itself. From time immemorial, the circle was the only geometric shape deemed "perfect" enough to describe the movement of heavenly bodies. Kepler knew he would be fighting a losing battle if he went against the closed-mindedness of his era and proved this assumption to be false. Donahue discovered Kepler's "sleight-of-hand" while trans- lating Kepler's book, ASTRONOMIA NOVA ("The New Astronomy"), into English. Kepler used calculated data for the planet Mars as a case study for all planetary motion and claimed that his calculations gave the elliptical theory an independent check. In reality, though, they did not. According to Donahue, "He fudged things", and was never challenged. Today, virtually all astronomers defend Kepler and do not feel his acts are serious misdeeds. "Kepler was one of the people who invented modern science," said Walter W. Stewart, a researcher with the National Institutes of Health who himself is helping the United States Congress investigate cases of scientific fraud. "It's not clear his standards were the same as ours." Owen Gingerlich (born 1930), a professor of astronomy and science history at the Center for Astrophysics of Harvard University and the Smithsonian Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, claims that Kepler's action may have been a perfectly acceptable move to show stubborn colleagues just how true his theory was. "Normally, one would not expect there to be a rhetoric of science, or a political part of the presentation," said Gingerlich. "But in reality, that element is very important." Kepler's idea of elliptical planetary orbits was "a radical departure from anything before. You could hardly sell that without making it look like you'd done it with tremendous accuracy," he noted. In recent times, Congress and scientific societies have shown considerable concern about scientific fraud, with new instances coming to light with increasing frequency. Fraud is not a uniquely modern phenomenon, though: It seems that several well-known scientists of earlier ages also appeared to have faked their results, probably to more convincingly show that their theories were in fact true. For example: Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who gave us today's "scientific method" and was one of the first to use a telescope for astronomical purposes, described sophisticated experiments even his colleagues doubted he performed. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), who formulated the now-famous law of gravitation, used some very manipulated mathematical calculations in order to prove his idea. Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), the Austrian monk who founded the branch of science known as genetics, published papers about his work with peas that some experts claim were just too good to be true. In the Kepler work, Donahue said a crucial portion of data used to prove the elliptical planetary orbit theory was "a fraud, a complete fabrication. It [the proof] has nothing in common with the computations from which it was supposedly generated." Kepler's goal was to explain the work of Copernicus, who put the Sun, rather than the planet Earth, at the center of the solar system. Suggested Readings - Banville, John, KEPLER: A NOVEL, David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc., Boston, 1984 (1981). This is a work of historical fiction. Koestler, Arthur, THE WATERSHED: A BIOGRAPHY OF JOHANNES KEPLER, University Press of America, Inc., Lanham, Maryland, 1960. This work is taken from Koestler's THE SLEEPWALKERS: A HISTORY OF MAN'S CHANGING VISION OF THE UNIVERSE, Macmillan Company, New York, 1959. About the Author - Ken Poshedly, ASA Secretary, is a long-time amateur astronomer, and maintains an ongoing interest in astronomical writing and historical astronomy. Ken's interests also include education and Volkswagens. A technical writer by profession, Ken has a degree in Journalism from Kent State University in Ohio. Ken assists with editing and electronic management of the hardcopy ASA Journal's computerized assembly. A LIVING LEGEND: THE ALVIN CLARK REFRACTOR by Alan Fleming Museums have always fascinated me, as have objects from the past in general. This is a common interest throughout the United States of America, as the growing number of museums and restored antiques will show. I find, however, an additional thrill in seeing a piece of history that is still functioning. With this in mind, I spent a Saturday night driving to South Carolina. What greeted me there was a truly awe-inspiring telescope that has been in service, at least in some form, for over a century. On November 12, 1988, I was fortunate enough to be with a group from the Astronomical Society of the Atlantic (ASA) that traveled to the Roper Mountain Science Center in Greenville. While I am usually reluctant to drive 256 kilometers (160 miles) on a Saturday night, I was all too eager to take this trip. The thought of seeing an Alvin Clark refractor, even an extensively modified and rebuilt one like this, had me excited. A group of intrepid society members and friends assembled at Fernbank Science Center in Atlanta, Georgia, at 5:00 p.m. and quickly arranged carpooling. Arriving at Roper Mountain, we had a few minutes to meet with members of the observatory, and to look at the 58-centimeter (23-inch) Alvin Clark refractor and the beautiful Charles E. Daniel Observatory. Then we met in a trailer/classroom nearby to see a presentation on the history of the telescope, along with some astrophotography slides taken by Roper Mountain member Jim Rouse. The story of the telescope itself was told by Doug Gegen, the center's astronomer. In summary, he said that this historic telescope was built in 1882 for Princeton University's Halsted Observatory by Alvin Clark. There it served for fifty-one years in its original form until 1933, when it was refurbished by the J. W. Fecker firm. After this rebuild, only the original Clark lens remained from the 1882 telescope. When Princeton decided to move to a reflecting telescope, the great refractor was sold to the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) for use at their Flagstaff, Arizona site. When funding for building an observatory was not approved, the telescope was declared surplus and put in storage. In 1978, the refractor was purchased by the School District of Greenville County with a donation from the Charles E. Daniel Foundation. Amateurs, enthusiasts, and professionals teamed up to restore the telescope and build a site for its use. By 1986, the 20,700-kilogram (46,000-pound) relic was where it belonged: In a dome and pointed at the sky. Following this presentation, astrophotographer Jim Rouse gave a slide presentation of pictures he has compiled in his years as an amateur astronomer. Along with the slides of planets, deep sky objects, and solar eclipses, Jim gave recommendations on telescopes, film, and camera settings for astrophotography. While most of his shots were taken through his personal telescopes, there were some beautiful shots taken through the 58-centimeter (23-inch) Alvin Clark refractor at Roper Mountain. When we returned to the dome to put the refractor to use, we were disappointed to see that thick clouds had rolled in, obscuring the night sky. Alas, the experience of looking through the historic lens would have to wait for another night. Hearing about the telescope's rebirth was inspiring, since it was organized and accomplished by motivated amateurs and professionals with a common goal. This should give hope to any astronomical organ- ization, like the ASA, which aspires to building its own observatory. About the Author - Alan Fleming, ASA Treasurer, grew up in the dark skies of the Florida countryside. Alan now makes his home in Atlanta, Georgia, working as a computer systems analyst. With his customized twenty-centimeter (eight-inch) Dobsonian telescope, Alan specializes in planetary and deep-sky observation. THE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF THE ATLANTIC May 1990 - Vol. 1, No. 10 Copyright (c) 1990 - ASA ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V11 #338 *******************