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Dr. Neal Sumerlin in Belk Observatory

Astronomy News

Dr. Neal Sumerlin keeps us abreast of happenings in the night sky and the progress of the new Belk Astronomical Observatory.

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The New Worlds

Posted on 02/04/2009

 In 1608, a little over 400 years ago, a rather obscure spectacle maker named Hans Lippershey was supervising the work in his shop.  Glass lenses had been known since medieval times to magnify nearby objects.  Monks had cut glass spheres in half to create "reading stones" by which they could more easily illuminate manuscripts.  Gradually came the realization that shallower lenses would magnify more, and spectacles are known to have been worn as early as 1300 in Italy.  Those of us who are over 40 can well appreciate what a blessing these spectacles must have been to those whose eyes could no longer focus well to read.  A blessing at least to the few of the time who had lived that long, and who were literate.

The story goes that some children were playing with the lenses in his shop when one held one lens up in front of the other.  "Look, master!" he cried, and showed Lippershey how a church steeple in the distance appeared much closer.  Lippershey applied for the first patent on a telescope.  (He was turned down-the design was deemed useful, but too easy to copy.)  He tried equally unsuccessfully to sell it to the Dutch army.  His design could magnify only three times.

Soon, however, others had in fact copied the device, and it was showing up in shops and markets all across Europe.  In May of 1609, word of the device reached an Italian university professor named Galileo Galilei.  Unlike the lavishly compensated professors of today, he was looking for ways to supplement his salary.  He taught himself to grind and polish lenses, devised ways to test the lens's curvature and magnification, and by August had a telescope that magnified eight or nine times.  He demonstrated the device to the political leaders of the Venetian Republic (his employer), and showed how ships invisible to the naked eye could be seen far out to sea.  The obvious military and commercial advantages led them to reward Galileo with a contract extension and a more than doubling of his salary.

It was then that he took the step that revolutionized our view of the cosmos and of our place in it.  He turned this new instrument to the night sky.

The moon, thought to be smooth, was revealed to have deep craters and high mountains.  By tracking their shadows, Galileo was able to determine their depths and heights.  The moon was a world like the Earth, at least in some ways.  The heavens weren't a different realm after all.  Venus was seen to go through phases, like the moon.  The only sensible explanation for this was that it revolved around the sun rather than the Earth.  Jupiter had four moons (forever after known as the Galilean moons) that revolved around it.  Neither the Earth nor the sun was the sole center of revolution in our solar system.  And Saturn-well, something was odd about Saturn.  Galileo's telescopes weren't good enough to quite make out what that was, and it was only later that others using better instruments were able to distinguish the ring structure of this planet.

Galileo would ultimately run afoul of the ecclesiastical authorities, partly due to his somewhat abrasive nature, and would spend the last years of his life blind and under house arrest.  But late 1609 and early 1610 afforded him vistas seldom revealed to any human being.  Those of us who have carried out scientific research at some point in our lives know the thrill that comes from learning something new, from being, at least for a little while, the only person in the world who knows this particular thing.  Of course, this is usually something that only a few dozen other people in the world actually care about, at least in my case.  Galileo, excuse the expression, rocked our world.  It has not been the same since.  Imagine, if you can, being the first person ever to see the things he saw.

2009 is the International Year of Astronomy (http://www.astronomy2009.org/), in celebration of the 400 years since Galileo first turned his instrument to the sky.  We plan to participate with the Lynchburg College Belk Observatory, and will be letting faculty and staff here at LC know about some planned events very soon.

Last week, my son and I were at the observatory to do some work, and some sightseeing as well.  Venus is the very, very bright object high in the southwest after sunset, and we turned the Margaret Gilbert telescope toward it to see its fat crescent shape.  It is so dazzling through the eyepiece that it is difficult to see detail-the clouds that cover its surface reflect a lot of light, and are pretty much featureless.  But I remembered that we had recently purchased a filter that transmits only ultraviolet light (the little that gets through our atmosphere), and in that wavelength of light, the featureless clouds acquire a bit more character.

A much dimmer (but still easy to see) Venus emerged: one whose light/dark boundary was a bit ragged, a three-dimensional object instead of a flat-looking cutout, an object that looked, well, like a planet.  When I find myself envying Galileo for his first-ever views, I have to remember that it is he who would envy me for the marvelous sights our telescope can bring to us.

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