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STAR
STRUCK
1000 years of the art and science of Astronomy
Huntington Library
- exhibition ends May 13th 2001
A report by Liam
Kennedy
ON April 15th my wife
and I went for a little different Easter experience.
I had seen references
to an exhibition at the Huntington Library about Astronomy. So I first
went checking out their web-site to see if I thought it would be interesting.
Check out http://www.huntington.org/EventsCal.html
The Huntington Library
is well known for it collection of rare books - and the summary really
got me interested.
"......showcases
approximately 120 rare books and manuscripts from The Huntington’s collection.
Included are works by Ptolemy, Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, Kepler,
Hubble, Einstein and others"
I don't know about
you - but it never ceases to amaze me just how lucky we are today - in
our access to incredible technologies - and information - which allow
us to view the heavens in ways that merely a few hundreds of years ago
would seem to be magical. What we now know to be the workings of the universe
would have branded us as heretics.
Viewing the original
works of Astronomical history somehow manages to instill an immense respect
for these great and brave people of our past.
In addition to the
really famous names mentioned above - there are also extracts from Edwin
Hubbles very notes which indicate his discovery of Cepheid Variable stars
in Andromeda Galaxy (or as it was then - the Andromeda Nebula). This was
the very point at which we truly started to understand the scale of the
universe - and it happened right here in our own "back-yard".
Somehow I could picture Hubble writing the notes in his log-book and the
utter excitement he must have been feeling. Seeing such personal artifacts
brings into focus - for me at least - that this science of ours is and
always will be about the people who are involved with it. It is not about
the technology - but always about scientists, astronomers and you and
me.
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a visual connection
between the exhibit at huntington with Mount Wilson - where Edwin
Hubble made his historic discoveries which scaled the universe to
a whole new size. |
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I would
highly recommend you visit this exhibit while you can. It ends on May
13th - don't miss your chance.
Return
to OCA Home Page
April 22nd 2001
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