Date: December 7, 2011
Title: Astronomy for Everybody
Podcaster: John Johnson
Links: www.GuerillaAstronomy.com
www.NewFlowerStudio.com
Description: Astronomy in 1958 wasn’t much different than it is today. This episode is is inspired by a 1958 paperback titled “Astronomy for Everybody.”
Bio: John Johnson is the host of the Guerilla Astronomy podcast and owner of New Flower Studio in Long Beach, CA. He’s the owner of three telescopes and wishes he could use them all at the same time!
Sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” has been sponsored by John Johnson, who wants to dedicate this episode to Laura Taylor, because today’s her birthday and he loves her more than he loves all the gas, dust, stars, galaxies, planets, nebulae, and black holes in the universe combined.
Transcript:
Hi everybody, I’m John Johnson from the Guerilla Astronomy podcast. Thanks for listening to and supporting 365 Days of Astronomy. Early in the summer, my friend Laura inherited a couple paperback books on astronomy that she gave to me as a gift. They’re from 1958 and have a classic look to them and only cost 75 cents. They’re 15 years older than I am and seem almost antique. The one I’m holding now is titled “Astronomy for Everybody,” written by George Abell. The cover shows a 1950’s looking family, father and son looking through the eyepiece and finderscope of a 3″ reflector telescope while mom sits with a pen and paper taking notes. I wish I knew what they’re supposed to be observing.
People listening of different ages are going to have different opinions of what’s old. I was 13 when Haley’s comet was last visible and I remember it clearly. But I expect someone not yet born in 1986 to think of that event as being as old as the dinosaurs. That’s how I see this Astronomy for Everybody book from 1958, which says at the bottom of the cover “A New and Exciting Hobby for the Entire Family.”
I have no clue how many hands this book has passed through in the last 53 years, maybe going from garage sale to garage sale, bookshelf to bookshelf, or just sitting in a box somewhere. I’ve looked through it several times and I was always impressed with the content. I think some of it may be a little too advanced for a true beginner, but there’s some great science in it’s pages. The author describes Aristarchus’s method for determining distances to the sun and moon from Earth. He measured the timing of the moon’s phases for example to estimate the sun being 20 times further away from the moon. Even though we’re about 20 times further away than he estimated, Aristarchus was thinking in the right direction.
The author also describes Ptolemy’s epicycles as the explanation for retrograde motion. He goes on to credit Copernicus, Galileo, and Tycho Brahe as founders of modern astronomy and describes the political climate of their times. There’s a whole section on Kepler’s laws of planetary motion and another on Newton’s laws of motion. In the first 32 pages we see diarams of the sky’s apparent motion from different locations, procession, solar and sidereal time, and light refraction. It’s not until page 34 in the section titled “Tools of Astronomy,” that we see our first actual telescope photo. It’s not a personal sized backyard telescope for the family, its the 40″ refractor at the Yerkes observatory in Wisconsin. In the Planets section the author says it’s unlikely there’s life anywhere else in our solar system due to the other planets temperatures, poisonous atmospheres, or lack of water. He also points out our sun’s planets were formed around the same time, with similar composition. Pluto was discovered 20 years prior to this book, but at the time, Pluto is still a planet, Uranus has 5 moons instead of 27, Neptune has 2 instead of 13. One of the neatest things in the book is the author stating that we may never know if other stars have planets of their own, unfortunately George Abell’s wikipedia page says he passed away 9 years before the discovery of the first confirmed exoplanet in 1992.
In a total of 128 pages Astronomy for Everybody covers nearly every topic you could imagine, comets, asteroids and minor planets, gas, dust, and nebulae, formation of galaxies, the lifecycle of stars and the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, impact craters, and radio astronomy. These are all topics we studied in my two semesters of astronomy at Long Beach City College in California. Ultimately, my point is that 53 years ago, the basics weren’t so different than they are today. Our instruments are bigger, better, and more effective now, but we’re really just building on the collection work created by a community of astronomers started thousands of years ago.
I’d like to share some examples of the effort and vision its taken to get where we are today.
- In around 4,500 B.C. structures of upright stone formations in were built by Neolithic people in what is now France. These formations may have been astronomical and were likely used to track the sun and moon.
- About 2,000 B.C. the first First solar and lunar calendars were developed in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
- In 130 B.C. Greece, Hipparchus developed the first acccurate star map and catalogue with over 850 of the brightest stars.
- The Baghdad school of astronomy opened in 813.
- In 1608 Hans Lippershey invented the telescope. We all owe him a round of applause.
- Giovanni Domenico Cassini saw polar ice caps on Mars in 1666.
- In 1781 Charles Messier compiled his catalogue of galaxies, nebula, and star clusters that we still use today.
- Jan Hendrik Oort explained the center of the Milky Way galaxy is in the constellation Sagittarius in 1927.
- 1923 was when Edwin Hubble discovered that galaxies exist outside the Milky Way galaxy.
- In 1957, Sputnik 1, became the first man-made object to orbit the Earth.
- NASA formed in 1958 and was never mentioned in this book, “Astronomy for Everybody” from the same year.
- The first known quasar was studied in 1963.
- The Hubble Space Telescope was placed into orbit in 1990.
- And in 1998 construction began on the International Space Station.
That seemed like a long list to give in a short podcast, but it’s only a fraction of the events and efforts throughout the ages that deserve mention. Each person who’s helped someone look through a telescope for the first time or helped others enjoy a meteor shower has done their part. Even though it seems like something small, it’s a piece of a bigger picture. I think if Kepler, the early Mayan astronomers, and every other person from astronomy’s history knew that we were able to come together online, without borders, to share our ideas, stories, and experiences they’d probably say thanks. I’d like to thank you again for listening and thanks to Laura for giving me these special books and inspiring this episode.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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