Beorn
09-25-2009, 03:20 PM
With quill in one hand and telescope in the other, Thomas Harriot trained his lens on the Moon and with care and precision began to draw.
Several hours later he had produced an intricate map of the Moon’s surface, showing craters, mountains and the planet’s empty “seas”. The date recorded on the edge of the map is July 26, 1609, four months before Galileo’s astronomical recordings were made.
But unlike Galileo, who thrived on publicity and needed the money, Harriot was a shy nobleman who never saw the need to publish his work.
If he had done so, the Englishman would be a household name, synonymous with astronomical discovery.
“He had a nice annual pension from the Earl of Northumberland and he was just interested in the pursuit of knowledge,” said Alison McCann, assistant county archivist for the Sussex Record Office, which holds all of Harriot’s Moon drawings, made on behalf of Lord Egremont.
However, 400 years on, Harriot is being recognised finally as the first astronomer to record observations made through a telescope. Two of his Moon drawings, along with recordings of Jupiter and sunspots, were unveiled yesterday at the Science Museum in London, in an exhibition timed to bridge the Apollo 11 40th anniversary and the 400th anniversary of Harriot’s recordings.
Speaking at the opening of the exhibition yesterday, Lord Rees, president of the Royal Society and Astronomer Royal, described Harriot as astronomy’s unsung hero. “It is good that his reputation is being restored,” he said.
Harriot’s very first recording was made using an elegant hand-held device, known as the “Dutch trunke” telescope, which was only six times more powerful than the naked eye. It would have shown a small pinpoint of sky, much like looking through a kaleidoscope, and Harriot would have had to inch the telescope across the sky, recording as he went.
The first drawing shows the lines separating light and dark areas, which correspond to contours on the Moon’s surface.
As time went on and Harriot acquired more sophisticated telecopes, his maps became more detailed.
By 1613 he had a telescope with a magnification of 36 times, and was able to record some of the most striking features of the solar system including Jupiter’s spot, Saturn’s rings and the dark sunspots that we now know correspond to magnetic activity on the Sun’s surface.
Parallel exhibitions of his work are taking place in Sussex and in Florence.
Harriot made his recordings on the estate of Henry Percy, the 9th Earl of Northumberland, famed for his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot.
Harriot himself was briefly imprisoned and interrogated, but is said to have told the authorities: “Everyone knows I prefer a life of quiet and devoted study.”
He is credited with the discovery of Snell’s Law, which describes the refraction of light through a lens, 20 years before Willebrord Snellius published his own theory.
Harriot also made important contributions to the development of algebra and wrote a treatise on navigation.
Other exhibits at the Science Museum’s Culture & Cosmos exhibition include replica telescopes of Galileo and Newton, Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius, in which he reported the device’s astronomical capabilities, and the telescope used by Jocelyn Bell to discover pulsars in the 1960s.
Other objects, such as an Astronomy Monopoly set, a French fan showing the Great Comet of 1811 and hoax print of the Moon dating from 1835 and complete with man-bats and a sapphire temple, indicate how astronomy has influenced popular culture.
Source (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6725572.ece)
Several hours later he had produced an intricate map of the Moon’s surface, showing craters, mountains and the planet’s empty “seas”. The date recorded on the edge of the map is July 26, 1609, four months before Galileo’s astronomical recordings were made.
But unlike Galileo, who thrived on publicity and needed the money, Harriot was a shy nobleman who never saw the need to publish his work.
If he had done so, the Englishman would be a household name, synonymous with astronomical discovery.
“He had a nice annual pension from the Earl of Northumberland and he was just interested in the pursuit of knowledge,” said Alison McCann, assistant county archivist for the Sussex Record Office, which holds all of Harriot’s Moon drawings, made on behalf of Lord Egremont.
However, 400 years on, Harriot is being recognised finally as the first astronomer to record observations made through a telescope. Two of his Moon drawings, along with recordings of Jupiter and sunspots, were unveiled yesterday at the Science Museum in London, in an exhibition timed to bridge the Apollo 11 40th anniversary and the 400th anniversary of Harriot’s recordings.
Speaking at the opening of the exhibition yesterday, Lord Rees, president of the Royal Society and Astronomer Royal, described Harriot as astronomy’s unsung hero. “It is good that his reputation is being restored,” he said.
Harriot’s very first recording was made using an elegant hand-held device, known as the “Dutch trunke” telescope, which was only six times more powerful than the naked eye. It would have shown a small pinpoint of sky, much like looking through a kaleidoscope, and Harriot would have had to inch the telescope across the sky, recording as he went.
The first drawing shows the lines separating light and dark areas, which correspond to contours on the Moon’s surface.
As time went on and Harriot acquired more sophisticated telecopes, his maps became more detailed.
By 1613 he had a telescope with a magnification of 36 times, and was able to record some of the most striking features of the solar system including Jupiter’s spot, Saturn’s rings and the dark sunspots that we now know correspond to magnetic activity on the Sun’s surface.
Parallel exhibitions of his work are taking place in Sussex and in Florence.
Harriot made his recordings on the estate of Henry Percy, the 9th Earl of Northumberland, famed for his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot.
Harriot himself was briefly imprisoned and interrogated, but is said to have told the authorities: “Everyone knows I prefer a life of quiet and devoted study.”
He is credited with the discovery of Snell’s Law, which describes the refraction of light through a lens, 20 years before Willebrord Snellius published his own theory.
Harriot also made important contributions to the development of algebra and wrote a treatise on navigation.
Other exhibits at the Science Museum’s Culture & Cosmos exhibition include replica telescopes of Galileo and Newton, Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius, in which he reported the device’s astronomical capabilities, and the telescope used by Jocelyn Bell to discover pulsars in the 1960s.
Other objects, such as an Astronomy Monopoly set, a French fan showing the Great Comet of 1811 and hoax print of the Moon dating from 1835 and complete with man-bats and a sapphire temple, indicate how astronomy has influenced popular culture.
Source (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6725572.ece)