Changes between Version 20 and Version 21 of Outreach/HandyFacts


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Timestamp:
11/14/12 12:38:41 (12 years ago)
Author:
jps@…
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  • Outreach/HandyFacts

    v20 v21  
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    88 * Rutherfurd Observatory was named for Lewis Morris Rutherfurd, a wealthy lawyer who was an amateur astronomer and one of the first astrophotographers (a rather expensive hobby in the mid-nineteenth century). His observatory was initially in the Stuyvesant estate on the Lower East Side, but he became associated with Columbia University (then around Rockefeller Center) as he and natural philosophers at Columbia shared a common interest in astronomical spectroscopy.
    9  * For approximately a decade before Pupin was built, telescopes were kept in the Wilde Observatory's dome and "transit building" where the Interdisciplinary Science Building now stands (an area formerly known as "The Grove"; see picture here: http://www.wikicu.com/File:WildeObservatory.png ). Transit observations were considered one of the most important aspects of astronomy even into the twentieth century for both time-keeping and navigation (Naval Observatories would announce the precise moment the sun crossed the meridian so that ships in the harbor could set their clocks in order to allow for accurate determination of longitude on the high seas). The current observatory still has a "transit room" with a slit oriented precisely north-to-south to aid in such observations.
     9 * From 1906, approximately two decades before Pupin was built, telescopes were kept in the Wilde Observatory's dome and "transit building" where the Interdisciplinary Science Building now stands (an area formerly known as "The Grove"; see picture here: http://www.wikicu.com/File:WildeObservatory.png ). Transit observations were considered one of the most important aspects of astronomy even into the twentieth century for both time-keeping and navigation (Naval Observatories would announce the precise moment the sun crossed the meridian so that ships in the harbor could set their clocks in order to allow for accurate determination of longitude on the high seas). The current observatory still has a "transit room" with a slit oriented precisely north-to-south to aid in such observations.
    1010 * Pupin Physics Laboratory was completed in 1927.
    1111 * A twelve inch (30 cm.) refractor telescope built by the Alvan Clark firm in 1916 for the Czarist government of Russia was to be installed in Crimea to observe an upcoming solar eclipse and verify Einstein's theory of relativity. With unrestricted U-boat warfare during World War I shipment was delayed until the war ended. The new Russian government headed by Lenin refused to pay for or accept the telescope, which sat in a crate in a warehouse until 1920, when Columbia bought it. Upon the completion of Pupin Hall, it was located to the big dome which was built especially to house that telescope. The telescope was sold in 1997 to South Carolina State Museum that specializes in the upkeep of the old Alvan Clark refractors. They plan to use it for actual observing again very soon: http://www.museum.state.sc.us/plan_visit/observatory.aspx