The Day We Found the Universe

by Marcia Bartusiak

  By the late 1880s, as Keeler entered his thirties and continued these celestial explorations, he faced a career crisis. He was eager to marry Cora Matthews, the niece of Richard Floyd, the superviser of the observatory's construction and president of the Lick Trust. The couple had first met on the mountain but could not tie the knot right away because Lick officials would not provide them adequate housing at the observatory once married. There was also Keeler's growing dissatisfaction with director Holden, a tyrannical and humorless man who often tried to share credit for some of Keeler's discoveries and at times ordered the young man to carry out observations he was not eager to do. It was said that Holden, given his West Point background, ran the observatory “as though it were a fort in hostile territory,” barking out commands like a general under seige. On top of that, there was the tiresome isolation atop the mountain, with few opportunities to escape to the city and engage in a fuller social life. “I am a human being first and an astronomer afterwards,” Keeler confessed to a friend.

  Faced with these growing concerns, Keeler began networking among his astronomer contacts and in 1891 secured the directorship of the Allegheny Observatory, a return to his first place of employment. His old boss Langley had by then moved to Washington, D.C., where he served as secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and was beginning work on his lifelong dream to successfully launch a flying machine.

  In terms of telescope power, Keeler's transfer to the Allegheny Observatory, situated on a hill across the river just north of America's steel capital, was a giant leap backward. The weather was poorer, the air was tainted with Pittsburgh's industrial smoke, the atmosphere was more turbulent for viewing, and the observatory's main telescope was a 13-inch refractor, far smaller than Lick's 36-incher. Yet, in some ways it was a blessing. The constraints forced him to focus his astrophysical studies on such objects as nebulae, a less trendy territory and hence riper for discovery. Because of their larger size, compared to stars, the fuzzy objects could still be adequately examined, even with a smaller scope. Moreover, astronomical photography had become more efficient and convenient, allowing him to build up exposures and see spectral details he could not see before with his eye alone. He doggedly tracked down every new advance in spectroscopic and photographic equipment in hope of offsetting Lick Observatory's advantages. The experience, though exhausting, only enhanced his astronomical abilities.

  From his new post in Pennsylvania Keeler eventually made headlines worldwide. He had been using his spectroscope at Allegheny to measure how fast some of the major planets, such as Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn, were rotating. Based on a method already used to gauge the Sun's rotation, Keeler knew that a spectral line in light arriving from the edge of the planet rotating toward us would be shifted toward the blue end of the spectrum; this same line would shift equally the other way, toward the red, when emanating from the edge, or “limb,” of the planet moving away. Along the way, Keeler cannily comprehended that he could also peg the velocity of Saturn's rings with the very same technique.

  In 1856 the famous Scottish theorist James Clerk Maxwell had theoretically proven on paper that Saturn's rings were not solid, akin to a phonograph record, but rather composed of innumerable particles, little “moonlets” circling around in independent orbits. Saturn's immense gravitational pull, avowed Maxwell, would have torn apart any sort of solid disk. If true, then Newton's law of gravity would predict that the myriads of tiny chunks located in the outer part of the ring would be traveling slower than those closer in, nearer to Saturn's gravitational grip—just as Pluto, far from the Sun, orbits at a slower velocity than the solar system's inner planets.

  A spectrum, taken on the night of April 9, 1895, gave Keeler the direct proof. The spectral lines indicated that the ring's particles were circulating around Saturn according to the rules of Sir Isaac. The ring was not a rigid plate after all. Within days, Keeler dispatched a report to the newly established Astrophysical Journal, and a torrent of newspaper and magazine articles about his triumph followed. His scientific reputation rose sharply, especially since he had devised such an elegant and simple test of Maxwell's conjecture, one that other astronomers knew they could have done years earlier, if only they had been so clever.

  While Keeler was busy with Saturn, Lick director Edward Holden was scheming to expand his astronomical empire, by bringing the historic Crossley reflector to the observatory—a telescope first constructed by a Londoner, Andrew Common, in 1879. He had built it to test out some design ideas, even earning a gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society in 1884 for the fine photographs taken with it, including the first image of a nebula, Orion. Its mirror was a glass disk, three feet wide, coated with a thin layer of silver, a relatively new development in reflector technology. Early telescopic mirrors had been made out of metal, which readily tarnished and easily got out of shape. Widespread use of reflecting telescopes did not occur until instrumentalists in the mid-nineteenth century learned how to cast large and sturdy glass mirrors, with the glass first ground and polished into an ideal shape for focusing the light and then its surface coated with a thin surface of metal for high reflectivity.

  Satisfied with his design, Common was soon eager to make an even bigger scope and sold his award-winning instrument in 1885 to Edward Crossley, a wealthy textile manufacturer who moved it to his estate in Yorkshire. But after a few years, Crossley sadly deemed the English countryside unsuitable for decent astronomical observations and put the reflector (as well as the special dome he had built for it) up for sale in 1893.

  Original Crossley telescope at the Lick Observatory

  (Mary Lea Shane Archives of the Lick Observatory, University Library,

  University of California-Santa Cruz)

  Holden may have been a poor astronomer but he was a powerful persuader. He convinced the English tycoon to donate his entire assembly for free to the University of California, which now owned and operated the Lick Observatory. Once the parts for the scope and its dome arrived in 1895, Holden pushed mightily to get the system reassembled as soon as possible. As the dome was reconstructed on the edge of Ptolemy Ridge, a time capsule was inserted into its wall. The small zinc box, still hidden away, contains a letter from Crossley, the calling cards of the Lick astronomers then on staff, a Lick visitors pamphlet, and a set of U.S. postage stamps.

  Lick astronomers, however, were not at all interested in this new addition to their astronomical arsenal. One disgruntled staffer declared the equipment “a pile of junk,” after some halfhearted attempts were made to put the telescope back into working order. For many, the Crossley was the last straw in a battle that had been raging for a very long time: a face-off between the director and his workforce. Tired of Holden's militaristic commands, hogging of the spotlight, and endless interference, the staff eventually revolted. Holden (described by Lick employees behind his back as “the czar,” “the dictator,” “that humbug,” “an unmitigated blackguard,” and “the great I am”) was forced to resign. The university regents had lost confidence in him. Holden took his final ride down “Lick Avenue,” the mountain's dusty road, on September 18, 1897. Only one person, a young assistant, went out to say good-bye.

  Keeler, by this time, was getting restless back in Pennsylvania. The mighty iron and steel mills in the Pittsburgh area were expanding, dirtying up his sky even further with the black soot of their coal fires. And, though he was noted as the country's most able spectroscopist, Keeler was more and more hampered by his tiny 13-inch refractor, a telescope originally built forty years earlier for amateur viewers. Its aging lens absorbed the higher wavelengths of light—blue and ultraviolet—which limited him to work primarily in the yellow-red region of the spectrum. To make matters worse, his former assistant at Lick, William Wallace Campbell, had arranged for Lick to get a new spectrograph (an instrument that not only disperses the light into its constituent colors but records the spectrum as well). It was being built in Pittsburgh, and Keeler had agreed to test it out before it was ship
ped to California. The experience made him realize that it would soon be impossible for him to compete with Lick, especially since a great economic turndown, a depression that started in 1893 and lasted for years, had dried up sources of funds to expand his facility and raise his salary. Holden's firing came at an opportune time for Keeler.

  In the search for Holden's replacement, a number of names came into play, including the venerable Simon Newcomb, George Davidson, who had originally coaxed Lick to fund the observatory, and several senior Lick astronomers. Keeler was added to the mix as a dark horse but soon became a favorite among the more progressive university regents. They wanted someone young, someone with impressive credentials, who would help the University of California achieve first-class status. Keeler won the vote by 12 to 9, Davidson coming in second.

  Hearing that they might lose their director, Allegheny Observatory supporters launched a last-minute effort to raise enough funds from the Pittsburgh elite to build a new edifice for Keeler, one equipped with an imposing 30-inch telescope. Poems were even written and printed in local newspapers to boost the cause:

  “Stay with us, Keeler,” so they say,

  “And twice as much as Lick we'll pay.”

  Wherefore perchance he'll not resign

  But stay and keep our stars in line.

  If the full amount required had been raised, Keeler would likely have stayed, not wanting to be disloyal to a town he had come to love. But the campaign fell short (to the relief of his wife, who longed to return to the sunny climes of the West Coast). Yerkes Observatory, in Wisconsin, home to the newest record-holding telescope, a 40-inch refractor, also made him a job offer but could not guarantee a permanent staff position. Keeler, anxious to advance both his research and professional career, at last telegraphed his acceptance of the Lick directorship to University of California officials. It was a time when the United States was finally emerging from its deep economic depression. Hope and optimism were on the rise, as the nation was attaining status as a world financial power, at last surpassing Great Britain in overall worth. Highways were being paved with asphalt, and cities brightly glowed at nighttime, awash in electric light. Telephone and telegraph wires lined urban streets like thick, artificial spiderwebs. Keeler's vocation was carried forward on the swelling tide.

  Keeler went back to Mount Hamilton, or the “hill,” as it was affectionately known to its residents, on June 1, 1898, seven years after he had first departed for the East Coast. There he found his new duties resembling that of a small-town mayor. “It [was] like being shipwrecked on an island,” recalled Kenneth Campbell, who had grown up on the mountain while his father, William, was on staff. “The Director of the Observatory was, I would say,…the czar… He had to see that Mrs. MacDonald didn't break her leg on that back step, as well as worrying about spiral nebulae.” By then the complex housed three senior astronomers, three assistant astronomers, a small group of workmen, and assorted spouses, servants, and children, some fifty people in all. If a hostess sent out an invitation for an evening gathering, it was plainly understood: no clouds in the sky, no party. Astronomy always came first. A new teacher for the one-room schoolhouse was hired nearly every year (as she often ended up marrying one of the astronomers). For relaxation, residents took some clubs over to the rudimentary golf course, eight holes laid out by one of the senior astronomers on a stretch of flat land just below the mountaintop. No need for man-made hazards; they were all natural—ditches, ridges, ravines, and rock formations; the “greens” were oiled dirt. Occasionally a ground squirrel would carry off a ball, mistaking it for a tasty nut.

  A biologist visiting Mount Hamilton returned to the valley below feeling as if he had “dwelt awhile upon Mount Sinai,…watched the marshalling of the stars and the dividing of the constellations.” Saturday nights were often held aside for visitors, with loaded stages and buggies coming up the mountain sometimes twenty to thirty in procession. Leaving San Jose, the wagons could take up to seven hours to traverse the twenty-five serpentine miles, passing first through orchards of figs, oranges, olives, and peaches. Always in sight during the slow ascent were the observatory's bright white domes. Not until 1910 did the automobile reduce the travel time to two hours.

  Keeler resided with his wife and two children, Henry and little Cora, in part of a three-story residence known as the Brick House, just a stone's throw from the main building, where the telescopes were located. The move to Lick decidedly changed his routine. His research was now curtailed by innumerable administrative duties, especially correspondence with university officials, suppliers, prospective students, colleagues, and the general public. “There are no astronomical phenomena expected to accompany, or precede, the second coming of Christ,” he politely responded to one correspondent. In style and temperament, Keeler was the anti-Holden. “No member of the staff was asked to sacrifice his individuality in the slightest degree,” said Lick astronomer W. W. Campbell. “No one's plans were torn up by the roots to see if they were growing… Keeler's administration was so kind and so gentle, and yet so effective, that the reins of government were seldom seen and never felt.”

  Science, though, remained Keeler's prime objective in accepting the directorship. He once again had access to large telescopes situated in a premier environment for viewing, far removed from polluted industrial air. He completed his first paper, the spectral analysis of a peculiar star's outer envelope, within a month of his arrival. For this, he used the famous 36-inch refractor. As director, Keeler could have wielded his power and become the prime user of the 36-inch, but instead he made a daring and momentous decision. He decreed that Campbell, who had become Lick's main spectroscopist during Keeler's absence, would continue using the 36-inch to carry out an ambitious project Campbell had already begun, measuring the velocities of the stars. Keeler, to everyone's astonishment, chose to work on something completely different: getting the disreputable Crossley reflector up and running.

  Keeler became interested in reflecting telescopes while he was still director of the Allegheny Observatory. He knew such telescopes would be particularly advantageous for carrying out his specialty—spectroscopy. The thick glass lenses in refracting telescopes tended to absorb certain wavelengths selectively (depending on the glass and lens construction), keeping that light from registering on either the eye or a photographic plate. This was a dismaying effect to a spectroscopist, who was devoted to collecting each and every light wave emanating from a celestial object. Mirrors, on the other hand, didn't have this problem. They shepherded all light waves equally, no matter what the color, right to the focus. Moreover, lenses were reaching their maximum size at the end of the nineteenth century; they couldn't be manufactured much bigger than forty inches without getting distorted by their own weight. Mirrors, on the other hand, could be made much larger. In Keeler's estimation, reflecting telescopes had acquired a stigma in the past because they had been placed in cheap, flimsy mounts.

  Keeler had seen the power of reflectors firsthand while visiting England in 1896 and attending a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. There Isaac Roberts, a former businessman and accomplished amateur astronomer, displayed the eye-catching photographs taken with his 20-inch reflector. Roberts had pioneered many of the techniques for taking long-term exposures and was the first to reveal that the Andromeda nebula was a spiral. Photography was then having a tremendous impact upon astronomy, radically transforming its procedures. Holden, right before Lick opened, wrote that astronomers can now “hand down to our successors a picture of the sky, locked in a box.” Observers were able to continue their research at their office desks, analyzing their images with mathematical precision, no longer dependent on crude drawings, hasty notes in a logbook, or the fading memory of their night at the telescope. Changes in a celestial object could at last be accurately monitored, from year to year and decade to decade.

  After the palace revolt against Lick's former director, the Crossley had been abandoned. It was the mou
ntain's white elephant. No Lick observer was interested in using the reflector, not a surprising turn of events given its dreadful reputation. Even before Holden left, a staff astronomer had written a long memorandum summarizing what sort of research could be done with the Crossley. The title of his paper broadcasted the answer with unforgiving bluntness: “No Work of Importance.”

  Keeler thought otherwise, even though he had never before used a reflecting telescope. He was interested because he was after rare game: the particular stars and nebulae that had eluded previous spectroscopists due to their faintness, and the Crossley's special features were going to allow him to obtain a decent spectrum. The Crossley was not just any telescope mirror; it was the largest of its kind in America, but Keeler faced innumerable engineering problems, which he had to solve before the Crossley would be fully functional. For one, the spectrograph he inherited was so large that it had to be removed from the telescope each time the dome needed to be shut. And the telescope's mounting, originally set so it would correctly track the stars in England, had to be realigned to account for Mount Hamilton's more southerly location. Then there was the need for a new eyepiece, as well as a drive clock to keep the telescope in sync with the moving sky. Chemicals had to be gathered for silvering the yard-wide mirror—silver nitrate, caustic potash, ammonia, and a reducing solution composed out of rock candy, nitric acid, alcohol, and water—and telephone wires extended from nearby astronomers' cottages to the dome, so there would be electric light to illuminate the guidewires in the eyepieces.