What a book! What a FANTASTIC book!!!
This book (The Day We Found the Universe by Marcia Bartusiak) is so good that it should be in print forever! Unfortunately it seems that it's not in print anymore – I had to buy a used one.
I. Extremely accessible style of writing.
This book reads like a novel and yet it contains so much astronomical info that it's hard to describe. Reading the book was a very pleasant experience.
II. Little known facts from history.
This book is mostly about astronomy and astronomers, but there are also some fun facts about the second half of the XIX century and about the early XX century. Among others it's about how first professional observatories were founded and/or financed and about how the American society was changing over time.
III. Astronomers who don’t get enough credit.
I’ve learned about many astronomers who were as important and as good (sometimes even better) than Edwin Hubble, but they were active much earlier, so they simply had inferior equipment. They all have one thing in common – they don’t get enough credit for what they had done.
This is why my review is so long – I wanted to at least mention some of them (they never appear in just one Internet article, but are “spread out” over different topics). This is my (mini) tribute to them.
III.1. James Keeler (who died unexpectedly in 1900 at the age of only 42).
Keeler discovered that the number of nebulas (what we now generally call faint fuzzies) was much bigger than what the famous William Herschel thought, by extensively using photography combined with a reflecting telescope.
Some photographs that taken by Keeler were completely stunning to other astronomers from that time. On this page there's an example (Orion Nebula):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossley_telescope
James Keeler was also a master of spectroscopy and in 1985 he proved (by detecting The Doppler effect) that the rings of Saturn (or rather their particular parts) orbit the planet with different speeds (the closer to the planet the faster they move) – the theory came from James Clerk Maxwell in 1856.
III.2. Heber Curtis (the “winner” of the Great Debate from 1920).
From 1902 to 1920 Curtis continued the work of Keeler on nebulas by using the same reflecting telescope, so if Keeler hadn't died unexpectedly Curtis maybe wouldn't have taken part in the Great Debate at all (it could have been Keeler in his place).
His “win” in the Great Debate was not really complete – he was right that (some of) the nebulas were other galaxies far away, but he was also WRONG that our galaxy was only 30 000 light-yers wide and that our Sun was close to the center of our galaxy (he shared a typical view of our galaxy then).
Ironically Curtis “gave up” the race for determining the distance to M31 (or other “spiral nebulae”) just months after the Great Debate by leaving the Lick Observatory to become director of the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh – a much worse location for astronomical observations.
III.3. Vesto Slipher (who made the second Edwin Hubble's big discovery – redshift increase with distance – much easier).
Already in 1914 Slipher presented his paper titled “Spectrographic Observations of Nebulae” where he described that of the 15 nebulas he had observed that far 3 were approaching Earth and the rest were moving away, some of them with huge velocities (Slipher got a standing ovation with Hubble present in the audience).
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1915PA.....23...21S/abstract
By 1925 nearly all of 45 measured velocities of the “spiral nebulae” were Slipher's, but when Hubble used Slipher's velocities he didn't credit Slipher at all in 1929 or didn't credit Slipher properly in 1931. Only after 2 DECADES, in 1953, Hubble gave Slipher proper credit, admitting that Slipher “had contributed 42 out of 46 nebular velocities then available”.
Fortunately other astronomers knew that Slipher deserved significant credit and “the Royal Astronomical Society presented its highest award, the Gold Medal, to him in 1933”.
III.4. Henrietta Leavitt (who discovered and measured Cepheid variables).
Cepheid variables turned out to be crucial for determining distances to globular clusters or to other galaxies. Leavitt discovered them while working as one of women “computers” (which was Edward Pickering's idea). In the following fragment of the book – about George Hale – there is a funny quote (with reversed order of words) from an article by Vera Rubin (“People, stars, and scopes” in Science vol. 309 from 2005): “Pickering discovered women and Hale discovered money”.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1117658
III.5. Harlow Shapley (the “loser” of the Great Debate from 1920).
I must admit that I have been impressed by what I learned from the book about Shapley. Some people remember him only as the “loser” (of the Great Debate), but the reality was completely different. Moreover his story is quite inspiring. I also liked the fact that he had a strong sense of humor that was often self-depreciating.
Shapley grew up on a farm and his father was a hay dealer. Later, in order to save enough money to go to college, he worked for some newspapers as a reporter, including a crime/police reporter. This fact probably explains why he sometimes overreached in his own theories and conclusions, but he was right in many astronomy cases anyway.
Shapley concentrated on finding distances to globular clusters and discovered that they are very far. He was the first to claim that out galaxy was much bigger than it was previously believed – he “won” the Great Debate in this regard, however he overestimated its size (300 000 light-years instead of 100 000 light-years). He was also right that the Solar System wasn't near the center of our galaxy.
His biggest mistakes were not trying to find Cepheid variables in “spiral nebulas” AND blindly believing in what his friend Adriaan van Maanen was claiming – that the spiral nebulas were (slightly) rotating over several years (which “proved” that they had to be relatively close). This is why he “lost” the debate as far as the locations of spiral nebulas were concerned (he thought they were in our galaxy instead of outside).
It's interesting to note that there is no transcript of the actual Great Debate and the articles published a year later were actually deepened and extended. “It was the written version, vastly altered and amended, that ultimately established the legend handed down by succeeding generations of astronomers, many coming to believe it was the bona fide transcript of the April scrap”.
Shapley was even worse than Hubble at (not) giving credit to other people, especially to Henrietta Leavitt and Ejnar Hertzsprung (who was first to “calibrate” the relationship discovered by Leavitt), but Shapley actually did his own calibration of Cepheid variables and used several additional assumptions, combining them with his immense work on globular clusters.
Shapley was a little “too brave” in his far-reaching assumptions, but he was also able to change his views. After Hubble presented his findings about the distance to M31, Shapley understood what they meant – that the spiral nebulas weren't part of our galaxy. It created a kind of rift between Shapley and his friend van Maanen (who was more stubborn before admitting that his rotating spiral nebulas must have been a mistake).
By the way: Shapley also made some very interesting observation of ants (the animals). “He began to study the travels of ants around the observatory, noticing that the higher the temperature, the quicker their pace. One species ran fifteen times faster once the Sun heated the insects by an additional 30ºC. (…) His findings were published in scientific journals.”
As for Shapley's self-depreciating humor (and Marcia Bartusiak's fantastic style of writing) here's an example:
“(… ) Finishing up in 1907, at the age of twenty-one, he at last qualified for admission to the University of Missouri, just as his schoolteacher mother had always desired.
Given his years of experience reporting on midwestern mishaps, Shapley had always intended to major in journalism, but upon arriving on campus he discovered that the promised opening of the university's School of Journalism had been delayed. “So there I was,” said Shapley later in life, “all dressed up for a university education and nowhere to go. 'I’ll show them' must have been my feeling. I opened the catalogue of courses and got a further humiliation. The very first course offered was a-r-c-h-a-e-o-l-o-g-y, and I couldn't pronounce it! … I turned over a page and saw a-s-t-r-o-n-o-m-y; I could pronounce that – and here I am!” Shapley, a lover of tall tales since he was a child, was just joking around. He actually was in need of a job, and an offer from Frederick Sears, head of the university's astronomy department, to work for him at 35 cents an hour was likely the deciding factor.”
IV. Edwin Hubble demythologized.
I was actually negatively surprised what kind of person Hubble was – on one hand extremely intelligent and gifted, but on the other hand desperate in search of identity and very insecure about how other people looked at him. Ha came from the Missouri state (exactly like Shapley), but later developed a strong British mannerism, “becoming a full-fledged (some might say rabid) Anglophile”. “Hubble cultivated an air of sophistication and restraint around his colleagues. The cold and standoffish persona of his youth never went away. Hubble kept his distance and maintained a regal air. (…) As other astronomers put it, he was a “stuffed shirt,” who couldn't “write an inter-office memo without it sounding like the Preamble to the Constitution.”
What's worse he was colorizing his story by “adding some dubious credentials to his curriculum vitae” (there are some examples given in the book, but I won't delve into this). His wife (who got to know him only when he was 31) kept repeating his tales after his death, which made it even harder to learn his true story.
What is consistent is the fact the Hubble was actually overly cautious and he tried to avoid making a mistake at all costs. He was so insecure that he hadn't published his findings on the distance to M31 for a very long time, but instead he kept giving some info in his letters to other astronomers. These “leaks” were such a hot topic that the general news got published in the New York Times on 23 November 1924, while there was still no official paper from Hubble. Other astronomers had to almost force Hubble to send his paper to the meeting in Washington, but he didn't come himself! His paper was presented by Henry Russell (on 1 January 1925).
As I already mentioned in the point III.3. when Hubble used Slipher's velocities (in his second big discovery – redshift increase with distance) he didn't credit Slipher at all in 1929 or didn't credit Slipher properly in 1931. Only after 2 DECADES, in 1953, Hubble gave Slipher proper credit, admitting that Slipher contributed 42 out of 46 nebular velocities then available.
“Hubble's redshift increase with distance” was a discovery that was “only” a proof of what some other people predicted earlier by solving Albert Einstein's equations of the general relativity: Willem de Sitter in 1917 (with the assumption of an empty space), Alexander Friedmann in 1922 and Georges Lemaître (a Catholic priest!) in 1927.
Not to mention that Hubble relied heavily on the work of his aide Milton Humason who is hardly ever credited at all.
[On a side note – my own conclusion: Hubble was indeed a great astronomer, but he is extremely overrated nevertheless. Nowadays some people compare him to Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein, but to me such comparisons are simply laughable. Carrying out some observations with the biggest available telescope and seeing a regularity in the results (by Hubble) that confirmed some theories proposed by other people doesn't compare to coming up with great scientific theories (by Newton and Einstein) that were later confirmed by real-life observations. Yes, detailed observations are important, but never on their own. In other words: the one who came up with a great theory seems to be more important than the one who found a great proof of that theory.]
V. Examples of irony of life.
As I already mentioned, the history could have been completely different if Keeler hadn't died unexpectedly at the age of only 42 or if Curtis had stayed at the Lick Observatory much longer.
Now I'd like to describe in a little more detail two of the most ironic moments concerning the very first step in this story (Keeler extensively using astrophotography combined with a reflecting telescope) – it wouldn't be possible without two unlikely “heroes”:
– the controversial first director of the Lick Observatory – Edward Holden,
– bad observing conditions around the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh.
Edward Holden wasn't beloved (to say the least) by the staff members of the Lick Observatory at all: “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.” But it was Holden who had hired Keeler to the observatory in 1888 (a very good decision) and it was Holden who brought the Crossley telescope to the observatory in 1895 (another very good decision). In the meantime, in 1891, Keeler left the observatory, partly because he was fed up with Holden (not a conscious decision by Holden, but it worked out very well in the end).
From 1891 to 1897 Keeler was the director of the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh – a much worse location for astronomical observations. “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.”
Keeler, a master of spectroscopy, had known that a reflecting telescope would be clearly better in this regard than a refractor (that absorbed some certain wavelengths selectively, depending on the glass and the lens construction), but in 1896 he “had seen the power of reflectors firsthand while visiting England” – there he met with Isaac Roberts who “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”.
These things explain why Keeler, when he became the director of the Lick Observatory in 1898, did everything that was needed to make the Crossley telescope properly functional (it took 4 months) AND used it with a photo camera. What a shame he died so soon after that!
Here's a link to another good review of the book:
https://knopfdoubleday.com/2009/05/20/some-surprising-facts-from-the-day-we-found-the-universe/
This book (The Day We Found the Universe by Marcia Bartusiak) is so good that it should be in print forever!
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