The Day We Found the Universe
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27 “Nebulous wisps …”: Keeler (1898b), p. 246.
28 “The photographic power”: Keeler (1899a), pp. 39–40.
28 “We know them so well today”: Osterbrock (1984), p. 306.
28 “The [Crossley's] workmanship is poor”: HP, Keeler to Hale, February 5, 1899.
28 first spiraling nebula on April 4 … “valueless”: LPV, Crossley Reflector Logbook, James Keeler, June 1, 1898, to April 10, 1899.
29 “Everyone in the Observatory”: LOA, Hale to Keeler, June 12, 1899.
30 “Several other faint nebulae”: Keeler (1899b), p. 538.
30 just stood in front of Keeler's photographs: Osterbrock (1984), p. 309.
30 “on the successes rather than on the failures”: LOA, Keeler to Campbell, June 14, 1900.
30 “The finest I have ever seen”: Osterbrock (1984), p. 310.
31 “a rather remarkable number”: Keeler (1899c), p. 128.
31 “there are nearly as many”: Ibid.
31 “There are hundreds, if not thousands”: Ibid.
31 only seventy-nine were identified as spirals: Dewhirst and Hoskin (1991), p. 263.
32 “a mirey climate for a great telescope”: Osterbrock (1984), pp. 320–21.
32 “The spiral nebula has been regarded”: Keeler (1900a), p. 1.
32 “from the great nebula in Andromeda”: Keeler (1900b), p. 347.
33 “If … the spiral is the form”: Ibid., p. 348.
33 “The heavens are full”: LOA, “Abstract of Lecture at Stanford University,” Keeler Papers, Box 31.
33 “Keeler … was a far better trained, more experienced spectroscopist”: Osterbrock (1984), p. 357.
33 “follow up his remarkable beginnings”: LOA, Hale to Campbell, September 14, 1900.
34 Keeler died unexpectedly: Osterbrock (1984), pp. 327–29; Tucker (1900), p. 399; Campbell (1900a), pp. 139–46.
34 “a hard cold”: LPV, Crossley Reflector Logbook, Keeler, December 1, 1899, to July 24, 1900.
34 “nothing very serious”: Osterbrock (1984), p. 327.
34 “incalculable”: Campbell (1900b), p. 239.
34 “loss cannot be overestimated”: Jones and Boyd (1971), pp. 428–29.
34 The journal Science ran a tribute: Hale (1900).
34 “The day of the refractor was over”: Osterbrock (1984), p. 347.
35 he decided to build another 36-inch reflector: Ibid., pp. 345–46.
35 “The results obtained with the two-foot reflector”: Ritchey (1901), pp. 232–33.
3. Grander Than the Truth
36 “Let us assume for the moment”: Webb (1999), p. 9.
36 “the center of the universe is everywhere”: Impey (2001), p. 38.
37 “If the Matter was evenly disposed”: Kerszberg (1986), p. 79.
37 “There is a size at which dignity begins”: T. Hardy (1883), p. 38.
38 “no other than a certain Effect”: Wright (1750), p. 48.
40 “I don't mean to affirm”: Ibid., p. 62.
40 “too remote for even our telescopes to reach”: Ibid., p. 84.
40 “there may be innumerable other spheres”: Swedenborg (1845), pp. 271–72.
40 what they thought he meant: See Hoskin (1970).
40 “just universes and, so to speak, Milky Ways”: Kant (1900), p. 63.
41 Kant's manuscript was destroyed: Hetherington (1990b), p. 15.
41 “I easily persuaded myself”: Kant (1900), p. 33.
41 “island universes”: The phrase was never used by Kant. Humboldt first applied the term to describe Kant's theory in his book Kosmos, published in 1845. He wrote it in his native language as Weltinsel, “world island,” which was later transformed into the more familiar expression.
41 Edmond Halley (of comet fame) counted six in all: Not all of the objects on Halley's list were true nebulae. The six are: (1) the Orion nebula, (2) the Andromeda nebula (now galaxy), (3) the globular cluster M22 in Sagittarius, (4) the globular cluster Omega Centauri, (5) the open star cluster M11 in Scutum, and (6) the globular cluster M13 in Hercules. In Halley's day, all appeared as unresolved clouds through a telescope.
42 “appear to the naked Eye”: Halley (1714–16), p. 390.
42 Charles Messier published in France his famous list of more than one hundred nebulae: Messier (1781).
42 “I … saw, with the greatest pleasure”: Herschel (1784b), pp. 439–40.
42 “These curious objects”: Herschel (1789), p. 212.
43 “may well outvie our milky-way in grandeur”: Herschel (1785), p. 260.
43 “When I read of the many charming discoveries”: Bennett (1976), p. 75.
43 Caroline, who had earlier joined him in England, fed him morsels of food by hand: Caroline Herschel was more than her brother's handmaiden; she was an accomplished astronomer in her own right. A proficient comet hunter (she was the first woman to find one), she was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society's Gold Medal in 1828.
43 “confirmed and established by a series of observations.” Herschel (1785), p. 220.
44 capable of seeing out to cosmological distances: Hoskin (1989), pp. 428–29.
45 “I have seen double and treble nebulae”: Herschel (1784b), pp. 442–43, 448. Sixty years before Alexander von Humboldt originated the term island universe, William Herschel actually referred to the possibility that the Milky Way might be an “island” in his classic 1785 paper “On the Construction of the Heavens.” “It is true,” wrote Herschel, “that it would not be consistent confidently to affirm that we were on an island unless we had actually found ourselves every where bounded by the ocean, and therefore I shall go no further than the [gauges] will authorise; but considering the little depth of the stratum in all those places which have been actually [gauged] … there is but little room to expect a connection between our nebula and any of the neighbouring ones.” See Herschel (1785), pp. 248–49.
45 “The inhabitants of the planets that attend the stars”: Herschel (1785), p. 258.
45 “A most singular phaenomenon!”: Belkora (2003), p. 109.
45 “Cast your eye on this cloudy star”: Herschel (1791), pp. 73, 84.
45 stars or a “shining fluid”—not both: Ibid., p. 71.
46 We were alone in the universe once again … at least for a while: There are some qualifiers to this blunt statement. While others interpreted Herschel as having abandoned the thought of other universes, the great British astronomer did seem to maintain that certain nebulae, ones he had already resolved, were distant star systems. So his sense of the visible universe did extend beyond the Milky Way. (From Robert Smith, personal communication, May 5, 2008.)
46 So big was the telescope tube: Hetherington (1990b), p. 16.
46 “to make a telescope of the largest dimensions possible”: “Report of the Council to the Forty-Ninth General Meeting of the Society,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 29 (February 1869): 124.
46 to devote himself to a newfound career as a gentleman scientist: The Parsons family had a rich engineering legacy. In 1884 Rosse's son Charles invented the first steam turbine that could convert the power of steam directly into electricity, a method adopted by power stations worldwide.
46 a British reporter once caught him working at a vise: Singh (2005), p. 181.
46 “It is scarcely possible to preserve”: Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 2 (1844): 8.
47 to resemble one of the ancient round towers of Ireland: Clerke (1886), p. 151.
47 “Sweeping down from the moat towards the lake”: Ball (1895), p. 193.
47 “strange stellar cloudlets”: Proctor (1872), p. 64.
47 “a structure and arrangement more wonderful and inexplicable”: “Report of the Council,” p. 129.
47 “With each successive increase of optical power”: Rosse (1850), p. 504.
48 “existed only in the imagination of the astronomer”: MacPherson (1916), p. 132.
48 “numerous firmaments”: Nichol (1840), p. 10.
48 “It is indeed wholly unlikely that our group…. THIRTY MILLIONS OF YEARS”: Nichol (1846), pp. 17, 36–37.
49 This was a brave estimate. In 1831 British geologist Charles Lyell arrived at an age for Earth of 240 million years based on the fossils of marine mollusks, but it was still highly controversial. In 1836 Charles Darwin took a copy of Lyell's Principles of Geology along with him on his famous voyage on the Beagle, which greatly influenced his developing ideas on evolution.
49 “poised so skilfully …”; “perfectly wretched”: Proctor (1872), pp. 64–67.
51 what they are instead of where they are: Keeler (1897), pp. 746, 749.
51 “coming upon a spring of water”: Huggins (1897), p. 911.
51 “The chemistry of the solar system prevailed”: Whiting (1915), p. 1.
51 “excited suspense … but a luminous gas”: Huggins (1897), pp. 916–17.
52 “The nebular hypothesis made visible!”: Turner (1911), p. 351.
52 “a planetary system at a somewhat advanced”: Huggins and Huggins (1889), p. 60.
52 “a ‘universe of stars,’ like our own ‘galactic cluster’”: Young (1891), p. 509.
52 “What is beyond the stellar system”: Ibid., p. 512.
52 “This strange and beautiful object”: Maunder (1885), p. 321.
52 “a scale of magnitude such as the imagination recoils”: Clerke (1902), p. 403.
53 “[The nova] was in the heart of the Great Nebula”: Frost (1933), p. 45.
53 “[I would deem] it a very great favor to be able to make use of your great harvest of new forms”: LOA, Chamberlin to Keeler, January 30, 1900.
53 “The question whether nebulae are external galaxies” … “misleading”: Clerke (1890), pp. 368, 373.
54 “That the spiral nebulae are star clusters is now raised to a certainty”: Scheiner (1899), p. 150.
54 A further investigation was not undertaken until 1908: Fath (1908).
54 “The hypothesis that the central portion of a nebula”: Ibid., p. 76.
54 perhaps because he was still a lowly graduate student: Osterbrock, Gustafson, and Unruh (1988), p. 188.
55 “stands or falls”: Fath (1908), p. 77.
4. Such Is the Progress of Astronomy in the Wild and Wooly West
56 stockings on the gear of the giant telescope; Mitchell automobile: AIP, interview of Mary Lea Shane by Charles Weiner on July 15, 1967; interview of Charles Donald Shane by Bert Shapiro on February 11, 1977.
56 “a spectacular performance is kept up”: LOA, Curtis Papers, unsigned letter to Curtis, August 9, 1905.
56 “wonderfully kind, jolly person, always smiling, always happy”: AIP, interview of Mary Lea Shane by Charles Weiner on July 15, 1967.
56 feat once described as “remarkable”: Trimble (1995), p. 1138.
57 These astronomers were specifying that the spirals' sizes and the brightness of their novae only made sense if they were milky ways at great distance: See Very (1911) and Wolf (1912).
57 “If the spiral nebulae are within the stellar system”: Douglas (1957), pp. 26–27.
57 “in best harmony with known facts”: Campbell (1917), p. 534.
57 a program that had not been a top priority since Keeler's death: Charles Perrine took over the Crossley after Keeler's death and made some substantial improvements to its mount, drive, gears, and mirror system. While he did carry out some work on the nebulae, his most acclaimed accomplishment with the Crossley was discovering the sixth and seventh moons of Jupiter. See Osterbrock, Gustafson, and Unruh (1988), pp. 142–44.
57 a gifted mechanic: McMath (1944), pp. 246–47; Curtis (1914).
57 The mirror had already been remounted in 1904: See Perrine (1904).
58 “magnum opus”: Stebbins (1950), p. 3.
59 student of the ancient languages: Aitken (1943), p. 276.
59 He hoped to continue at the Lick Observatory: LOA, Curtis to Keeler, March 24, 1900.
59 “ready and glad to be put at anything from a shovel up”: LOA, Curtis to Campbell, April 11, 1900.
59 hired him on as an assistant: Osterbrock (1984), p. 342.
60 simply good training for a life on Mount Hamilton: LOA, Curtis to Campbell, June 9, 1902; AIP interview of Douglas Aitken by David DeVorkin on July 23, 1977.
60 covered in thick yellow dust: Stebbins (1950), p. 2.
60 saw three miles of fire-front, burning fiercely: Campbell (1971), pp. 62–64.
60 “And, naturally, the lens inverted everything”: AIP, interview of Douglas Aitken by David DeVorkin on July 23, 1977.
60 “Queer how completely we seem to have taken root here”: LOA, Curtis to Richard Tucker, March 23, 1909.
60 Halley's Comet: LOA, Curtis Papers, Folder 1, Halley report.
61 amassed a photographic library of around one hundred nebulae and clusters: Curtis (1912).
61 boosted that number to more than two hundred: LOA, Curtis Papers, “Report of Work from July 1, 1912, to July 1, 1913.”
61 “Many of these nebulae show forms of unusual interest.” Ibid.
61 rich diversity in their appearance: Curtis (1912).
61 “Crossley still has its old reputation”: MWDF, Box 153, Curtis to Walter Adams, May 27, 1913.
61 “If you got a little bit sleepy at night”: AIP, interview of Mary Lea Shane by Charles Weiner on July 15, 1967.
61 observe from a boat: This popular tale, often heard at the Lick Observatory, was told to me by Lick astronomer Tony Misch.
61 “of smooth nebulous material and also of soft star-like condensations or nebulous stars”: Ritchey (1910b), p. 624.
62 “rotatory or otherwise…. As the spirals are undoubtedly in revolution”: Curtis (1915), pp. 11–12.
63 “the Greek letter F … for lack of a better term”: Curtis (1913), p. 43.
63 “shows dark lane down center” … “beautifully clear”: LOA, Curtis Papers, Folder 1, “Edgewise or Greatly Elongated Spirals.”
63 “due to the same general cause”: Curtis (1918b), p. 49.
63 Not one spiral had ever been spotted in the thick of the Milky Way: For his doctoral research at the Lick Observatory, Roscoe Sanford searched the length and breadth of the Milky Way for signs of a spiral, using long exposures in hope of bringing to light faint nebulae previously hidden within the Milky Way. He didn't find any. See Sanford (1916–18).
63 “[The] great band of occulting matter in the plane of our galaxy”: Curtis (1918b), p. 51.
64 “Were the Great Nebula in Andromeda situated five hundred times as far away”: Curtis (1918a), p. 12.
65 nova in NGC 6946: Ritchey (1917).
65 was sure that the outbursts were not simply variable stars: Curtis (1917c), p. 108.
65 “That both these novae should have appeared in the same spiral”: Ibid.
65 “must be regarded as having a very definite bearing”: Curtis (1917b), p. 182.
65 “Such is the progress of Astronomy”: HUA, Harlow Shapley to Henry Norris Russell, September 3, 1917, HUG 4773.10, Box 23C.
65 show off the plate: AIP, interview of C. Donald Shane by Helen Wright on July 11, 1967.
66 He said as much to the Associated Press: LOA, Newspaper Cuttings, Volume 9, 1905–1928, “Three New Stars Are Seen at Lick.”
66 20 million light-years distant: Curtis was not far off the mark. NGC 4527, the location of the first nova he spotted, is currently estimated to be around 30 million light-years from Earth.
67 On one plate alone he counted 304 additional spirals: Curtis (1918a), p. 13.
67 “The great numbers of small spirals found on nearly all my plates”: Ibid., pp. 12–14.
67 “Get up a collection of about 40 classy slides”: LOA, Curtis Papers, Folder 3, 1919–20, Curtis to Campbell, February 6, 1919.
68 “The history of scientific discovery affords many instances”: Curtis (1919), pp. 217–18.
68 Over the course of that March evening, Curtis laid out his arguments point by point: LOA, Curti
s Papers, Folder 3, 1919–20, Lecture on “Modern Theories of the Spiral Nebulae.”
69 “As to my staying here permanently, I have no idea whatever of doing that”: LOA, Curtis Papers, Folder 2, Curtis to Campbell, December 8, 1918.
69 “The hypothesis of external galaxies is certainly a sublime and magnificent one”: Crommelin (1917), p. 376.
5. My Regards to the Squashes
70 “is not without a considerable atmosphere”: Herschel (1784a), p. 273.
71 “Considerable variations observed in the network of waterways”: Pannekoek (1989), p. 378.
71 news story of the year: “Mars” (1907), p. 1.
71 who had made their fortunes creating the American cotton industry: Strauss (2001), p. 3.
72 “After lying dormant for many years”: Lowell (1935), p. 5.
72 occasionem cognosce, “seize your opportunity”: Hoyt (1996), p. 15.
72 he once listed his address as “cosmos”: Strauss (2001), p. 5.
72 eventually fired one charter member of his observing staff: Hoyt (1996), pp. 123–24.
72 “The Strife of the Telescopes”: Hoyt (1996), p. 112.
73 “as efficient as could be constructed”: Hall (1970b), p. 162.
73 “I … take him only because I promised to do so”: LWA, Lowell to W. A. Cogshall, July 7, 1901.
73 for many of America's greatest astronomers … red and blue ends of the spectrum: Smith (1994), pp. 45–48.
74 “When you shall have learnt all about the spectroscope”: LWA, Lowell to Slipher, December 18, 1901.
74 “kept himself well insulated from public view”: Hall (1970b), p. 161.
75 always wore a suit and tie to work when not observing: AIP, interview of Henry Giclas by Robert Smith on August 12, 1987.
75 “Don't observe sun much. It hurts lenses”: LWA, Lowell to Slipher, January 11, 1902.
75 “Permit nobody whatever in observatory office”: LWA, Lowell to Slipher, January 24, 1902.
75 “Will you kindly see if shredded wheat biscuit are to be got at Haychaff”: LWA, Lowell to Slipher, January 4, 1903.
75 “How fare the squashes?”; “My regards to the squashes”; “You may when the squashes ripen send me one by express”: LWA, Lowell to Slipher, October 7, 12, and 21, 1901.
75 “Why haven't I received squashes?”: LWA, Lowell to Slipher, December 27, 1901.