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Main
Date: 01 Nov 2006 21:16:52
From: Regina Roper.
Subject: The REAL first discoverer of the Horsehead nebula...
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Friends:
Perhaps those of you who subscribe to ASTRONOMY have received and read
through the December 2006 issue. On pp.66-71 there is a nice,
colorful, and interesting article about the "Horsehead" nebula.
Unfortunately, like almost all extant articles, it failed to go back
to the original Harvard documents, and therefore misrepresents (in our
view) the actual discoverer, and the first photographer. The article
states that E. C. Pickering took the picture of the nebula and
"detected a hint of the Horsehead shape" in 1888.
The original publications in the Annals of the Harvard College
Observatory tell a very different story. The team of *William H.*
Pickering, E. C.'s photographer brother, took the first deep sky
photographs with the Harvard 8" Bache telescope, including images that
captured IC-434. An especially good one clearly shows the Horsehead
nebula. That object was discovered on the plate by Mrs. Williamina
Fleming, head of the female "computing" team at Harvard; she measured
it and catalogued it along with a number of other nebulae.
The tabulated data, specifically crediting Mrs. Fleming as first
observer, was sent to Dr. Dreyer for inclusion in the first Index
Catalogue. But, Dreyer "simplified" the information, and
re-attributed ALL the discoveries merely to "Pickering", leaving out
the specific attributions to staffers provided by HCO's director.
All subsequent articles we've seen tend to rely on Dreyer. So, my
husband -- at the request of Richard Berry in 1989 -- went back and
researched the discovery, obtaining Lick Observatory's copies of the
relevant HCO Annal, and then obtaining from Dr. Martha Hazen, the
Curator of Historical Photographs at Harvard College Observatory, a
print made from the original plate (which she found in the collection
in a paper envelope inscribed with the words "Horsehead discovery
picture".)
The exact chronology of these events is detailed, with footnotes
citing exact passages of original reference texts, in a long paper my
husband wrote about the discovery and investigation of the Horsehead
in the 19th century up to the famous image by Dr. Isaac Roberts in
1900; in addition he revised this information into the form of three
short, "popular" articles that cover the entire story, from William
Herschel's catalogue of "52 Regions Affected with Milky Nebulosity",
through Harvard's first Horsehead picture, Barnard's subsequent
studies at Lick and Yerkes, Roberts' photograph, Heber Curtis' work on
the object at Lick, and John C. Duncan's fabulous image with the
Hooker telescope at Mt. Wilson in 1920: a picture so clear that some
astronomers aver that it gave rise to the nickname "Horsehead".
Richard Berry had proposed publishing either one article just on the
Horsehead, or possibly a series of three articles about the
development of early nebular photography, based on my husband's
research. But Berry left Astronomy magazine, and the subsequent
editor cancelled his ongoing projects. Then, unfortunately, Kalmbach
Publishing appears to have "lost" (their word) the original
photographic prints we sent them, and the hard copies of the first
drafts for subsequent editing.
We despaired of ever seeing the true history of the discovery of the
Horsehead in print; and so in October of 2005, my husband and I put up
the "Story of the Horsehead Nebula" website.
Those of you who might be skeptical of this: be aware that the
material we uncovered was thoroughly reviewed and vetted by Lick and
Harvard astronomers; and our long paper cites the pages of the
original publications that back up the story. Furthermore, Dr. Hazen
herself presented a talk on our behalf about the "untold" tale of Mrs.
Fleming's discovery at a convention of the Astronomical Society of the
Pacific in Cambridge in the early 1990s.
Be sure to read the beautiful Astronomy article, and savor the
pictures. Then, if you'd like to know a bit more about the authentic,
documented details, consult our web page at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~astro-app/horsehead/index.html
Our site contains five articles: an overview of the history of the
research project; three separate articles in a "popular" style,
without footnotes, covering the history over about 125 years, followed
by a section on the astrophysics of the nebula (containing information
provided to us by Dr. Alexander Tielens, then with NASA-Ames), and
concluding with a lengthy discussion of observing the Horsehead with
amateur optics: from binoculars to telescopes. We were privileged to
have the cooperation and contributions of several eminent scientists,
including Dr. Donald E. Osterbrock, Lick Observatory/University of
California; Dr. Martha Hazen, Harvard College Observatory; Dr. Allan
Sandage, Carnegie Institution; Dr. George Herbig; and
Dr. David Malin, AAO.
The final section of our site contains a lengthy paper with full
annotations and citations, covering the period of the 19th century --
with respect to nebular studies that led to the discovery of the
Horsehead -- in much more depth.
The original image prints are presumably *somewhere* in storage at
Kalmbach's facility, and so far have not turned up. The best we could
do last year was to reprocess the photocopies we had made before
sending the originals to the publisher. However, this will enable you
to verify that Harvard's discovery picture gives a good depiction of
the Horsehead, not what Astronomy's 2006 article claims: "a hint". We
also include the first Barnard picture, in his widefield study of
Orion; the first image by Max Wolf; Roberts' historical image, and
many others including amateur monochrome and color films taken by the
collaborators in our research project, Ron and Ryan Wood. We were
gratified to receive the permission from our friend Chuck Vaughn to
illustrate the front page of our website with one of his best images.
We hope you'll drop by!
Best,
Regina
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Date: 01 Nov 2006 19:13:26
From: Mike Simmons
Subject: Re: The REAL first discoverer of the Horsehead nebula...
|
Regina,
Wow, what a great project! I will read your extensive web site in detail
when I find the time it deserves. But I was immediately struck by the fact
that this all started with a computer (the old-style human kind) not
getting the credit she deserved. In researching many articles on Mount
Wilson's history -- and even meeting some of the women who worked there as
computers -- I've learned that it's a part of the advance of astronomical
knowledge that is not known well enough. A few computers at Mount Wilson
did get authorship on the astronomers' papers but all too often their
contribution was unheralded and later forgotten.
Mike Simmons
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Date: 02 Nov 2006 06:11:43
From: Moe M. Down
Subject: Re: The REAL first discoverer of the Horsehead nebula...
|
"Mike Simmons" <mikes@nospam.mtwilson.edu > wrote in message
news:1rfwnurkfyhhi.e7wfhvlt3808.dlg@40tude.net...
> Regina,
>
> Wow, what a great project! I will read your extensive web site in detail
> when I find the time it deserves. But I was immediately struck by the
> fact
> that this all started with a computer (the old-style human kind) not
> getting the credit she deserved. In researching many articles on Mount
> Wilson's history -- and even meeting some of the women who worked there as
> computers -- I've learned that it's a part of the advance of astronomical
> knowledge that is not known well enough. A few computers at Mount Wilson
> did get authorship on the astronomers' papers but all too often their
> contribution was unheralded and later forgotten.
>
> Mike Simmons
People who make websites are a waste of GOOD time. Most can't write, most
aren't even educated and most SUCK!!
FO internet!!
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Date: 02 Nov 2006 01:57:23
From: Matthew Ota
Subject: Re: The REAL first discoverer of the Horsehead nebula...
|
A very extensive web page and research project.
The female contribution to astronomy cannot be ignored and is most
important.
Half of the astronomers that I work with are female.....and many are
better than I at the subject.
On a side note, it is truly amazing when you compare the old
photographic plates with the images taken my modern amateur
astronomers.
Matthew Ota
Regina Roper. wrote:
> Friends:
>
> Perhaps those of you who subscribe to ASTRONOMY have received and read
> through the December 2006 issue. On pp.66-71 there is a nice,
> colorful, and interesting article about the "Horsehead" nebula.
>
|
| | |
Date: 04 Nov 2006 01:26:35
From: jpo
Subject: Re: The REAL first discoverer of the Horsehead nebula...
|
Matthew Ota wrote:
> A very extensive web page and research project.
>
> The female contribution to astronomy cannot be ignored and is most
> important.
> Half of the astronomers that I work with are female.....and many are
> better than I at the subject.
>
> On a side note, it is truly amazing when you compare the old
> photographic plates with the images taken my modern amateur
> astronomers.
Technology evolves. It comes as no surprise to amateurs. Those not
doing it are all talking about it, as if doing it! A once quiet community
has become very verbose, but the technology speaks for itself. Imagine
what Darwin could have done had he had modern technology!
>
>
> Matthew Ota
>
> Regina Roper. wrote:
> > Friends:
> >
> > Perhaps those of you who subscribe to ASTRONOMY have received and read
> > through the December 2006 issue. On pp.66-71 there is a nice,
> > colorful, and interesting article about the "Horsehead" nebula.
> >
|
| |
Date: 02 Nov 2006 01:56:27
From: Matthew Ota
Subject: Re: The REAL first discoverer of the Horsehead nebula...
|
A very extensive web page and research project.
The female contribution to astronomy cannot be ignored and is most
important.
Half of the astronomers that I work with are female.....and many are
better than I at the subject.
On a side note, it is truly amazing when you compare the old
photographic plates with the images taken my modern amateur
astronomers.
Matthew Ota
Regina Roper. wrote:
> Friends:
>
> Perhaps those of you who subscribe to ASTRONOMY have received and read
> through the December 2006 issue. On pp.66-71 there is a nice,
> colorful, and interesting article about the "Horsehead" nebula.
>
|
| |
Date: 02 Nov 2006 01:49:59
From: Matthew Ota
Subject: Re: The REAL first discoverer of the Horsehead nebula...
|
A very extensive web page and research project.
The female contribution to astronomy cannot be ignored and is most
important.
Half of the astronomers that I work with are female.....
On a side note, it is truly amazing when you compare the old
photographic plates with the images taken my modern amateur
astronomers.
Matthew Ota
Regina Roper. wrote:
> Friends:
>
> Perhaps those of you who subscribe to ASTRONOMY have received and read
> through the December 2006 issue. On pp.66-71 there is a nice,
> colorful, and interesting article about the "Horsehead" nebula.
>
|
| |
Date: 02 Nov 2006 01:44:03
From: JpRw
Subject: Re: The REAL first discoverer of the Horsehead nebula...
|
"Regina Roper." wrote:
> Friends:
>
> Perhaps those of you who subscribe to ASTRONOMY have received and read
> through the December 2006 issue. On pp.66-71 there is a nice,
> colorful, and interesting article about the "Horsehead" nebula.
>
> Unfortunately, like almost all extant articles, it failed to go back
> to the original Harvard documents, and therefore misrepresents (in our
> view) the actual discoverer, and the first photographer. The article
> states that E. C. Pickering took the picture of the nebula and
> "detected a hint of the Horsehead shape" in 1888.
>
> The original publications in the Annals of the Harvard College
> Observatory tell a very different story. The team of *William H.*
> Pickering, E. C.'s photographer brother, took the first deep sky
> photographs with the Harvard 8" Bache telescope, including images that
> captured IC-434. An especially good one clearly shows the Horsehead
> nebula. That object was discovered on the plate by Mrs. Williamina
> Fleming, head of the female "computing" team at Harvard; she measured
> it and catalogued it along with a number of other nebulae.
>
> The tabulated data, specifically crediting Mrs. Fleming as first
> observer, was sent to Dr. Dreyer for inclusion in the first Index
> Catalogue. But, Dreyer "simplified" the information, and
> re-attributed ALL the discoveries merely to "Pickering", leaving out
> the specific attributions to staffers provided by HCO's director.
>
> All subsequent articles we've seen tend to rely on Dreyer. So, my
> husband -- at the request of Richard Berry in 1989 -- went back and
> researched the discovery, obtaining Lick Observatory's copies of the
> relevant HCO Annal, and then obtaining from Dr. Martha Hazen, the
> Curator of Historical Photographs at Harvard College Observatory, a
> print made from the original plate (which she found in the collection
> in a paper envelope inscribed with the words "Horsehead discovery
> picture".)
>
> The exact chronology of these events is detailed, with footnotes
> citing exact passages of original reference texts, in a long paper my
> husband wrote about the discovery and investigation of the Horsehead
> in the 19th century up to the famous image by Dr. Isaac Roberts in
> 1900; in addition he revised this information into the form of three
> short, "popular" articles that cover the entire story, from William
> Herschel's catalogue of "52 Regions Affected with Milky Nebulosity",
> through Harvard's first Horsehead picture, Barnard's subsequent
> studies at Lick and Yerkes, Roberts' photograph, Heber Curtis' work on
> the object at Lick, and John C. Duncan's fabulous image with the
> Hooker telescope at Mt. Wilson in 1920: a picture so clear that some
> astronomers aver that it gave rise to the nickname "Horsehead".
>
> Richard Berry had proposed publishing either one article just on the
> Horsehead, or possibly a series of three articles about the
> development of early nebular photography, based on my husband's
> research. But Berry left Astronomy magazine, and the subsequent
> editor cancelled his ongoing projects. Then, unfortunately, Kalmbach
> Publishing appears to have "lost" (their word) the original
> photographic prints we sent them, and the hard copies of the first
> drafts for subsequent editing.
>
> We despaired of ever seeing the true history of the discovery of the
> Horsehead in print; and so in October of 2005, my husband and I put up
> the "Story of the Horsehead Nebula" website.
>
> Those of you who might be skeptical of this: be aware that the
> material we uncovered was thoroughly reviewed and vetted by Lick and
> Harvard astronomers; and our long paper cites the pages of the
> original publications that back up the story. Furthermore, Dr. Hazen
> herself presented a talk on our behalf about the "untold" tale of Mrs.
> Fleming's discovery at a convention of the Astronomical Society of the
> Pacific in Cambridge in the early 1990s.
>
> Be sure to read the beautiful Astronomy article, and savor the
> pictures. Then, if you'd like to know a bit more about the authentic,
> documented details, consult our web page at:
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~astro-app/horsehead/index.html
>
> Our site contains five articles: an overview of the history of the
> research project; three separate articles in a "popular" style,
> without footnotes, covering the history over about 125 years, followed
> by a section on the astrophysics of the nebula (containing information
> provided to us by Dr. Alexander Tielens, then with NASA-Ames), and
> concluding with a lengthy discussion of observing the Horsehead with
> amateur optics: from binoculars to telescopes. We were privileged to
> have the cooperation and contributions of several eminent scientists,
> including Dr. Donald E. Osterbrock, Lick Observatory/University of
> California; Dr. Martha Hazen, Harvard College Observatory; Dr. Allan
> Sandage, Carnegie Institution; Dr. George Herbig; and
> Dr. David Malin, AAO.
>
> The final section of our site contains a lengthy paper with full
> annotations and citations, covering the period of the 19th century --
> with respect to nebular studies that led to the discovery of the
> Horsehead -- in much more depth.
>
> The original image prints are presumably *somewhere* in storage at
> Kalmbach's facility, and so far have not turned up. The best we could
> do last year was to reprocess the photocopies we had made before
> sending the originals to the publisher. However, this will enable you
> to verify that Harvard's discovery picture gives a good depiction of
> the Horsehead, not what Astronomy's 2006 article claims: "a hint". We
> also include the first Barnard picture, in his widefield study of
> Orion; the first image by Max Wolf; Roberts' historical image, and
> many others including amateur monochrome and color films taken by the
> collaborators in our research project, Ron and Ryan Wood. We were
> gratified to receive the permission from our friend Chuck Vaughn to
> illustrate the front page of our website with one of his best images.
>
> We hope you'll drop by!
>
> Best,
> Regina
A good piece of work for posterity and touching. I have to admit my first
reaction was negative - and this comes from someone whose own
grandmother was kicked out of her phd program in physics at the
U oif C Boulder, just when the banks closed in the Great Depression
of the 1930's. Gram never recovered or got over it. There must be
10 billion Flemmings in history. My gradmother was one! Were we to
have to trace and give credit to them all, there wouldnt be a forest left
on Earth for all the paper needed to document it!
Likewise, the Horsehead was not and is not exactly "crucial", in the
grand scheme of things. Anecdotal yes, but not crucial, and its discovery
while one anecdote in an otherwise larger fast-evolving
scientific revolution, was not crucial .... except perhaps for Ms
Flemming.
I think back to WWII and all the women, children, and unrecorded
others doing crucial war work (making horse shoe nails and each
a vital contribution). All of these Flemmings fade into history but are
nonetheless important on some personal level.
Good work and thanks for it.
jw
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Date: 03 Nov 2006 09:36:50
From: AstroApp
Subject: Re: The REAL first discoverer of the Horsehead nebula...
|
On Thu, 02 Nov 2006 01:44:03 -0600, JpRw <thirty@eighty.org > wrote:
>Likewise, the Horsehead was not and is not exactly "crucial", in the
>grand scheme of things. Anecdotal yes, but not crucial, and its discovery
>while one anecdote in an otherwise larger fast-evolving
>scientific revolution, was not crucial .... except perhaps for Ms
>Flemming.
>
>I think back to WWII and all the women, children, and unrecorded
>others doing crucial war work (making horse shoe nails and each
>a vital contribution). All of these Flemmings fade into history but are
>nonetheless important on some personal level.
>
>Good work and thanks for it.
>jw
>
It's important to note that Mrs. Fleming was not ignored later by the
scientific community; she was just ignored by Dr. J. Dreyer when he
was compiling the first Index Catalogue!
So too were all the individual "computers" whose discoveries,
measurements, etc., were *credited specifically* by Dr. E. C.
Pickering, the responsible, even-handed Director of the Harvard
College Observatory. He gave proper scientific credit to the
indivisuals on his starr, attaching their names and details of their
work to the information about the objects that they gleaned from the
historic first deep sky plates. Dr. Pickering published all the
information in the Harvard Annal, and then sent it to Dreyer.
Sadly, Dreyer chose to REWRITE all of those details, and made it
confusing for posterity by merely crediting these discoveries to
"Pickering" (no other name or initials given, leading one to assume
naturally that he meant the Director of Harvard College Observatory);
subsequent researchers sometimes speculate that he might have meant
"Edward" or "William" in various later articles and books. For
example, Robert Burnham's Handbook, I recall, credits the discovery of
the Horsehead to E. C. Pickering in a sort of roundabout way.
The issue is really *what did Dreyer intend*? Our conclusion is that
he dismissed the "underlings" as unimportant, and believed all the
credit was due to the officials at the Observatory, even if others
(especially -- GASP! -- women) did the actual work!
Other scientists who have looked at this issue have pooh-poohed this
interpretation, and have said to us, "no, silly: it's just that Dreyer
was 'simplifying' things." One astronomer was extremely agitated at
the *thought* of a suggestion that a celebrated 19th century
astronomical compiler would be prejudiced against "women and
underlings". He refused to publish our article as written because of
it, although *other* -- and more prominent -- astronomers agreed with
us, and just came to the logical conclusion that this was but one more
example, out of countless many, of the "old boys' network" in play.
It's not merely a problem that a particular woman was denied credit;
it's also the whole irritating tendency of books, articles, Internet
sites, and other derivative works ignoring FIRST SOURCES.
Dreyer was NOT the first source. The first source of all these
discoveries was the Annals of the Harvard College Observatory, which
is a publication likely to be found in every major science library,
university, and major observatory collection. The Annals are readily
available, and if one takes a moment to consult them, you'll find
interesting facts about many other issues that are dealt with poorly
by lots of popular astronomy publications.
The remarkable 1890 publication of the Annals about their pioneering
photographic research, from which we drew much of our paper, was
written by William Pickering in a lucid account of Harvard's program
that is now recognizes as being pretty much the very beginning of
organized, standardized scientific astrophotographic work. The
publication has (for the time) quite good printed reproductions of
many of their pictures, and a mountain of detail in charts and
descriptive text. It is fascinating reading, covering every aspect of
the astrophotographic arts as devised by W. C. Pickering and his
assistants. They learned how to hypersensitize their plates (by
pre-flashing them with a short exposure of light prior to opening the
camera shutter); they worked to reduce halation effects around bright
stars by devising dark unreflective plate coatings; they also drew up
formulas based on their calculations of exposure time versus depth of
image (disproving reciprocity effect, as it was then known, since a
very long exposure did not necessarily increase image contrast in a
linear relationship with exposure time.) Reading the description of
their methodology -- all of it being developed experimentally *for the
first time ever* is fascinating. William's paper continued to be
relevant for nearly a century hence. It's sad to see all his unique
and creative innovations being credited to his brother...
Returning to Mrs. Fleming: she made many other discoveries, and did
receive lots of credit by the end of the first decade of the 20th
century.
To quote her bio on Wikipedia:
>
While [at Harvard College Observatory], she devised and helped
implement a system of assigning stars a letter according to how much
hydrogen could be observed in their spectra. Stars classified as A had
the most hydrogen, B the next most, and so on. Later, Annie Jump
Cannon would improve upon this work to develop a simpler
classification system based on temperature.
Fleming contributed to the cataloguing of stars that would be
published as the Henry Draper Catalogue. In nine years, she catalogued
more than 10,000 stars. During her work, she discovered 59 gaseous
nebulae, over 310 variable stars, and 10 novae. In 1907, she published
a list of 222 variable stars she had discovered.
She was placed in charge of dozens of women hired to do mathematical
classifications and edited the observatory's publications. In 1899,
Fleming was given the title of Curator of Astronomical Photographs. In
1906, she was made an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical
Society of London, the first American woman to be so elected. Soon
after, she was appointed honorary fellow in astronomy of Wellesley
College. Shortly before her death, the Astronomical Society of Mexico
awarded her the Guadalupe Almendaro medal for her discovery of new
stars. She published A Photographic Study of Variable Stars (1907) and
Spectra and Photographic Magnitudes of Stars in Standard Regions
(1911).
<
By the time Dreyer printed his Second Index Catalogue, he could NOT
ignore her. By then she had received so much credit for her work that
he no longer listed her original discoveries as being by "Pickering".
Too bad that the Horsehead -- coming much earlier -- is wrongly
attributed. In fact, as discussed in our website, William Pickering
was among the first to speculate that the Horsehead was not merely a
"notch" or discontinuity or wave in the nebula IC-434, but actually a
cloud of dark obstructing matter. So it's just as annoying to have W.
C. Pickering's prescient speculation ignored, as Mrs. Fleming's
scrutiny.
Furthermore, the ASTRONOMY magazine article, as we said earlier, says
that E. C. Pickering obtained a photo with a "hint" of the Horsehead
shape. Not so! The 8x10 print we got from Harvard quite reasonably
shows the Horsehead as a DARK spot along the wavy bright nebula, just
as we see it today in better images. The "head" has the
characteristic shape that we all recognize; it's not a "hint". (See it
in our website article.)
The only explanation for the ASTRONOMY article making this
mis-statement is, I surmise, that the *original sources* were not
consulted. Amazingly, we sent them to ASTRONOMY in 1990! The
magazine has the picture somewhere in storage (if they could take the
time to find it; they weren't able to do it for us when we asked them
to return it a few years ago.)
Furthermore, the photo was published by us -- with permission of HCO
-- a year before the ASTRONOMY article was published. So, it could
have been seen on the Net...
But, I don't want to overstate anything particularly negative about
the recent article. ASTRONOMY did produce a very comprehensive,
accurate, and useful article on Mrs. Fleming in the early nineties
(though it did not mention her work identifying the Horsehead.) And,
the recent article on the Horsehead in the December 2006 issue is
excellent in many ways: it gives a very inclusive discussion of the
gradual growth of knowledge about things related to bright and dark
nebulae as far back as Herschel's list of "52 Nebular Regions". And
it has excellent images, and modern information about the astrophysics
of the object.
It merely misses the actual story of Harvard's TRUE contribution to
the discovery of the object, relying -- one assumes -- on Dreyer's
distorted account of it.
We appreciate the nice responses of several of you who have commented
in this thread!
Best,
Regina and Stephen
"AstroApp"
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| | | |
Date: 03 Nov 2006 10:42:53
From: AstroApp
Subject: Re: The REAL first discoverer of the Horsehead nebula...
|
On Fri, 03 Nov 2006 09:36:50 GMT, AstroApp <AstroApp@blocked.net >
wrote:
>The remarkable 1890 publication of the Annals about their pioneering
>photographic research
Correction:
We looked it up in case someone has access to the Annals.
Pickering, William H. ''lnvestigations in Astronomical Photography.''
HCO Annals. Vol. XXX1I-Part 1. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Observatory
(1895)
1895, not 1890.
And, apologies for all the typos in the earlier post (it's late; our
eyes are weak; and laptops are frustrating, aren't they?!)
RR
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| | | | |
Date: 03 Nov 2006 19:44:22
From: Regina Roper.
Subject: Re: The REAL first discoverer of the Horsehead nebula...
|
Furthermore, the initial announcement by Harvard of the discovery of
the nebula now known as the Horsehead was given here:
Pickering. Edward C. (Editor) (no author listed) "Detection of New
Nebulae by Photograph'' HCO Annals. Vol. XVII No. VI. (1890) pp.
113-114
RR
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| | | | |
Date: 04 Nov 2006 01:27:18
From: jpo
Subject: Re: The REAL first discoverer of the Horsehead nebula...
|
AstroApp wrote:
> On Fri, 03 Nov 2006 09:36:50 GMT, AstroApp <AstroApp@blocked.net>
> wrote:
> >The remarkable 1890 publication of the Annals about their pioneering
> >photographic research
>
> Correction:
>
> We looked it up in case someone has access to the Annals.
>
> Pickering, William H. ''lnvestigations in Astronomical Photography.''
> HCO Annals. Vol. XXX1I-Part 1. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Observatory
> (1895)
>
> 1895, not 1890.
>
> And, apologies for all the typos in the earlier post (it's late; our
> eyes are weak; and laptops are frustrating, aren't they?!)
>
> RR
wonderful & I thank you. Posterity will thank you.
jw
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| |
Date: 04 Nov 2006 11:09:16
From: Stupendous_Man
Subject: Re: The REAL first discoverer of the Horsehead nebula...
|
On Nov 3, 2:44 pm, Regina Roper. <Astro...@BLOCKEDearthllink.net >
wrote:
> Furthermore, the initial announcement by Harvard of the discovery of
> the nebula now known as the Horsehead was given here:
>
> Pickering. Edward C. (Editor) (no author listed) "Detection of New
> Nebulae by Photograph'' HCO Annals. Vol. XVII No. VI. (1890) pp.
> 113-114
This article is freely available on-line, thanks to the
ADS. Go to
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1890AnHar..18..113P&db_key=AST&data_type=HTML&format=&high=44215828ae04166
and read the article for yourself.
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| | |
Date: 04 Nov 2006 23:26:23
From: AstroApp.
Subject: Re: The REAL first discoverer of the Horsehead nebula...
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On 4 Nov 2006 11:09:16 -0800, "Stupendous_Man" <mwrsps@rit.edu > wrote:
>> Pickering. Edward C. (Editor) (no author listed) "Detection of New
>> Nebulae by Photograph'' HCO Annals. Vol. XVII No. VI. (1890) pp.
>> 113-114
>
> This article is freely available on-line, thanks to the
>ADS. Go to
>
>http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1890AnHar..18..113P&db_key=AST&data_type=HTML&format=&high=44215828ae04166
>
>and read the article for yourself.
Thanks!! I am grateful, as our copies of this stuff were all sent to
ASTRONOMY in 1990, but they have lost all trace of it, apparently. I
had not realized how easy it would be to retrieve this via the net.
Actually, I was right in the first place: the very long Annals article
that discusses the whole photographic program was not the 1895 one
just about the nebular discoveries -- cited immediately above in the
link provided by "Stupdendous-Man"-- but the earlier comprehensive
one...
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1895AnHar..32....1P&db_key=AST&data_type=HTML&format=&high=4536be715106844
"Investigations in astronomical photography" by
Pickering, William H.; Pickering, Edward C., editor
Annals of Harvard College Observatory, vol. 32, pp.P1-116.12
It is, unfortunately, 135 pages (18 megabytes!) but I recommend this
to anybody interested in the history of astrophotography!
(Please note, however, the copy of the Annals at Lick Observatory,
which I used for my research in 1989-90, showed far better
reproductions of the photos than this scanned PDF file does. Even my
own photocopies of the publication looked better. Unfortunately you
can hardly tell what the Orion nebula looks like in this scan of the
paper; it was much better reproduced in the original. So: be warned
that you will be very unimpressed with the pictures. Original prints
made from the actual plates, such as an 8x10 glossy that Dr. Hazen
sent me of Harvard's plate B2312, the Horsehead discovery picture,
look darned good!)
To reconstruct the entire saga, which we unfold on our web articles in
several ways (three short articles, one long one just about the 19th
century, and a timeline) you have also to read some other source
information, including various issues of the Harvard Annals, the Lick
Observatory Publications, the BAA Journal, the Astrophysical Journal,
and so forth (publications specifically referenced in the footnotes
for our long paper.)
What is a little difficult to determine just from this one Harvard
paper from 1895 is when the Horsehead was first seen and measured.
The nebula now known as IC-434 turned up earlier in test pictures but
no one specifically noticed the little "jog" that on a deep exposure
is clearly seen as a dark obscuring cloud. Only in 1888 did Mrs.
Fleming see it, using plate B2312. In the Table 1 notes, p.116
forward in the present WH Pickering paper, her description of this as
"an indentation" is given. Subsequently, WH Pickering speculated that
it was possibly obscuring dark matter, like other prominent dark spots
in the sky known since the days of Herschel and sometimes spotted by
comet hunters with efficient refractors employing large exit pupils --
they were not very obvious in the long refractors at observatories,
typically used a high magnification.
EC Pickering published these discoveries, measurements, and
descriptions of Mrs. Fleming, done from the WH Pickering and
staff-made photos (EC Pickering did NOT do any of those; he was a
visual observer in those days.)
ECP then sent all of that to Dreyer.
When Dreyer put out the first Index Catalogue in 1895, he attributed
all of that info to "Pickering", leaving out references to Mrs.
Fleming and other female "computers", and to WH Pickering.
But, by the time Dreyer compiled the second Index Catalogue, here are
the achievements and honors that Mrs. Fleming had accomplished:
-- In 1899, Fleming was given the title of Harvard College Observatory
Curator of Astronomical Photographs.
-- In 1906, she was made an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical
Society of London, the first American woman to be so elected.
-- In 1907, she published a list of 222 variable stars she had
discovered.
So, Dr. Dreyer could not ignore her; she was given credits in the
second IC for her contributions.
The crux of the issue of Dreyer's behavior is one that is open to some
interpretation and analysis.
We know what HE DID. He *rewrote* the attributions, giving them to
"Pickering", for the first IC. WHY?
Some experts who have looked at our research say, "well, he was just
simplifying it, leaving out irrelevant details."
But, others agree with our point of view: that Dreyer did not CARE
about the details, and he SHOULD have cared.
Next question: WHY?
At least two possibilities here: (1) that he identified more with his
astronomical peers, such as the prominent astronomer EC Pickering,
Harvard College Observatory Director; or (2) he was a bit prejudiced
about what we could call "underlings and women".
The mere possibility that the latter MIGHT be true has kept at least
one publication, in the past, from printing our article. This
suggestion we made after analyzing the facts riled up a certain
editor, who insisted that nothing of the sort EVER happened in the
field of astronomy!
Other astronomers we've talked with have rebutted that denial, and
could give us examples of various "low level" people, including women
assistants and even full-fledged astronomers, being short-shrifted.
It happens less and less as we approach today's scientific culture,
when it would be unthinkable for a female astronomer to be denied
credit for her work.
We aren't proposing this research as a polemical essay of "rabid
feminism"; not at all! But, we think that a person who does
something, deserves the credit.
WH Pickering was just as badly short-shrifted here, as Mrs. Fleming.
We have found some prominent books, articles, and web resources that
attribute the discovery of the Horsehead to: EC Pickering, Isaac
Roberts, and EE Barnard. All of those are explicitly and precisely
incorrect.
Max Wolf, in fact, believed that HE had discovered the nebular
phenomena south of Alnitak; but he was set straight when he sent his
1891 "discovery" picture to the Journal of the British Astronomical
Association. They published it, but with a footnote that CORRECTED
the claim of discovery. (As of this time in history, the
"indentation" we now call the Horsehead -- the dark obscuring cloud --
was thought by most, save WH Pickering, to be merely a sort of jog or
wave in the nebula IC-434. It was only Barnard who absolutely
concluded that it was a separate, dark, nebula, from work he did with
the Bruce astrograph and Yerkes 40" telescope in 1913, which was
stronly confirmed by Heber Curtis' work with the Crossley telescope at
Lick in 1918.)
To return to the topic of Mrs. Fleming: over her career she discovered
at least 59 gaseous nebulae: I say "at least" since in one case, there
were TWO nebulae in her discovery: IC-434, and the Horsehead. One
respondent in this thread equates this work of hers with interesting
but inconsequential historical oddities, as it were, compared to
'real' achievements like making horseshoe nails. Must we make this
moral/social/utilitarian distinction? Isn't is simply important to
know that some people discover facts about the world and the cosmos,
and some people make things with their hands or effect in their own
ways the course of life? It's not a zero-sum game: we needn't neglect
the one, in favor of knowing just about the other.
The larger story, about the WHOLE early history of the Horsehead
nebula, is how the vague eyepiece impressions of Herschel were finally
tracked down, confirmed both visually and photographically, and then
analyzed to reveal a whole new category of important astronomical
phenomena: deep sky dark nebulae. The thrust of our research was to
cover ALL of that; we merely focus here on Mrs. Fleming because, to
our surprise, in doing the study we turned up the unrecognized fact
that SHE was the first scientist to note, measure, and describe it.
RR & SRW
"AstroApp"
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