William Herschel Society and the Society for
the History of Astronomy Conference at BRLSI, 02nd April 2016
1 John Chuter on Somerset Astronomers – British Astronomical
Association
Names in development of astronomy in
Somerset:
Roger Bacon 12th-13th century
John Pond 18th century
Observatory at Westbury sub Mendip
John George Hickley 1810-1889
Rector of Walton church, rectory now owned
by Millfield School. Sent letter of invitation to astronomical scientific
society to local Conservative MP.
Rev Phillips 1868-1942
Had his own observatory on Headley
and made some drawings of Jupiter.
Reginald Waterfield
Locally educated, early WHS member
Harold Ridley
Bequeathed £59,000 to BAA for fund
in his name.
From treasure trove of items:
Record of total eclipse in Sweden
in 1851.
Sir John Hippisley 1804-1898
Another wealthy astronomer with an
observatory at Stoneaston Park, whose image is similar to that of Sir John
Naismith. He had a friendship with Lessell. Drew the Orion Nebula.
2
Bristol Astronomical Society: Past, Present and
Future - Richard Mansfield
There will be a transit of Mercury
I about a month’s time - The Transit of Mercury, 2016 May 9 according to https://britastro.org/transit2016
on 03/04/2016.
William Denning 1849-1931 turned
down being a Gloucestershire wicket keeper to become great astronomer. Craters
on the Moon and Mars named after him.
Sir Bernard Lovell (1913-2012)
First Chairman but didn’t do anything.
Colin Pillinger (1943-2014) got the
soft landing on Rosetta Philae Landing approved and also was behind failed
Beagle 2 Mission to Mars.
3
A Thin Hard Rain from Outer Space: 100 years of
Cosmic Ray Astronomy by Roger Moses
Roger’s PhD thesis was on the super heavy
particles from cosmic rays, which followed on from Dr Rodney Hillier’s PhD 10
years earlier on heavy particles in cosmic rays.
Father Theodore Wulf, a Jesuit priest
interested in the sciences, developed a cloud chamber ionization chamber
apparatus for the detection of radiation. He noticed that readings at the top
of the Eiffel Tower in Paris did not decrease as quickly as would have been
expected compared to at ground level is all the radiation came from the earth
and was absorbed by the atmosphere.
Rudolph Hess, the man hailed for the
discovery of cosmic rays, was a wealthy man dressed in a three-piece tweed suit
with a professor’s cap. In 1912 he went up in a balloon and measured ionization
up in the atmosphere. He found it decreased with height and then increased with
height up to a maximum point.
Then came the use of the cloud chamber
track of the positron discovered by Carl Anderson in 1933 following Paul
Dirac’s – a celebrated Bristol physicist – work on quantum mechanics.
·
First evidence of an anti-particle
·
Discovery of a pi meson
EM shower from particle interaction
cascade. Pfotzer maximum at 18km where max radiation from particle shower is
released by the cascade – just at the height Concorde used to fly so it had to
have a radiation detector on board to descend just in case of a spike in
radiation due to a cosmic ray!
Cosmic ray paths used to be detected using
stacks of photographic plates using silver emulsion. Equipment needs to be
stored in a radiation shelter during solar flares which occur about once per
year. 1% of all cosmic rays reaching the Earth are high energy heavy atomic
nuclei which come from supernovae. Lithium batteries are cosmic rays that
started out as iron and had bits chipped off leaving lithium.
Heavy nuclei arrive on Earth with the
incidence of 1 particle per km per year or less frequently than that – need
massive detector arrays such as the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina to
detect them.
4 William Herschel Society AGM
Science and technology committee advisory
body to Bath Preservation Trust, which now owns and operate WH Museum and
principal trustee, for events of a scientific flavour in Bath.
Potential PhD in Herschel at local
university with a musical focus.
WH work with Speculum Metal was what the
journal was previously named.
Fred Schlesinger, treasurer and membership
secretary will circulate copy of membership list to committee.
Mike Perkins, member of society, gives thanks
for shear quality of Speculum publication.
Changes to proposed statement for the
purpose of the William Herschel Society:
Society should not be just local, given the
Herschel societies in Japan and Hannover – William Herschel-Shorland, Herschel
family member.
Herschel was a musician rather than a
composer – Michael Tabb, committee member.
William Herschel Society should collaborate
specifically with Bath Spa University as well as University of Bath, stated
explicitly in statement – Peter Ford, retiring chairman.
Bristol Astronomical Society is much larger
as WH Soc so joint membership would not follow as deal would not be reciprocal
due to WH Soc membership being £10 and BAS membership being £30.
5 William Herschel and the Bath Philosophical Society by Prof Francis
Ring
Bath was an open society during the
Georgian period where people could escape London and have open discussions
about what they wanted.
The Octagon Chapel on Milsom Street was
built for those seeking to escape the cold, smelly and overcrowding at Bath
Abbey. So in 1766 William Herschel arrived as organist at new chapel.
In those days, people would talk about
science in tea rooms and coffee houses but only the clergy were really
educated. Teachers, poor intellectuals, were considered high class entertainers
with equipment to wow the audience.
Agricultural society was formed to improve
the crop yield and understanding of farming techniques as before that what
little knowledge there was about these things was passed down through families
and people generally had little understanding. The subgroup Bath Philosophical
Society was then formed. Philosophy in those days meant physics and science of
astronomy. This group was for the rich and the intellectuals. This was
considered to be a better group than the Royal society of the day, with 25
members compared with 4 members of the Royal Society at the time.
Members included:
William Smith, father of English geology.
Edmund Rack, secretary of the society, found evidence for the existence of
space, was called crackers at the time but has later been proven true.
William Falconer – Physician at Royal Mineral Water Hospital. Went on to join Royal
Society.
Dr William Oliver – painting in Royal Mineral Water Hospital of consultation between
a physician and a surgeon – those two groups didn’t speak in those days due to
the circumstances of their training and standing in society. Oliver’s biscuit
left out bad things such as fat and sugar, so patients seeking restoration from
their ill health caused by a bad diet would then take the spa waters in Bath
and go home cured.
Joseph Priestly – 1774 discovered Oxygen. Also Carbon dioxide, ammonia, nitrous
oxide, and photosynthesis. He would ride his horse to Bath from Bowood House in
Calne everyday, would have taken over two hours. His book on optics is in the
WH museum.
John Bryant: worked with WH on constructing a telescope.
Benjamin Smith – optician.
Sir William Watson MD FRS was a doctor and member of the Royal Society through his father. He
then introduced William Herschel to Royal Society. They first met in the street
when Sir William Watson was observing the sky with a 7 foot telescope in the
street as he had no garden in his house. William Herschel came upon him and
asked what he was doing and that was the start of a life-long friendship.
Unfortunately, no trace of Bath
Philosophical Society journals remains in existence today.
Herschel discovered Uranus, in Bath on 13th
March 1781, using hand ground speculum metal mirrors in his telescope.
William Herschel discovered infrared
radiation in 1800. This piqued John Leslie, who was Scottish, who wrote angrily
that Herschel’s discovery was an outrage to science as John Leslie had been
working on radium for last ten years without publishing his work. But at the
society meeting William Herschel was able to reproduce experimentally his
discovery for the Royal Society.
William Herschel lived in a few different
houses in Bath, in Rivers Street as well as another house on New King Street
other than the house of the William Herschel Museum.
Dr Allan
Chapman, William Herschel Society President:
William
Herschel knew how to get on with landed gentry – picked up on English ways and
customs and that led him to great success.
6 Kepler and the Universe: How One Man Revolutionized Astronomy by
David Love of SHA
David has written a book with this title
published in America.
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630).
Some background reading:
The Solar System by Sir Patrick Moore. The
Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler which talks specifically about Kepler.
Since Pythagoras in Ancient Greece, world
has been perceived to be at the centre of the universe surrounded by Celestial
Sphere. More advanced models were proposed through time to explain observations
made of the stars and planets – Ptolemy. Copernicus’ model which placed the Sun
at the centre of the universe was attacked by Martin Luther who said the Earth
is fixed and the Sun stood still in the Bible – presumably during a solar
eclipse. Tycho Brahe said that Earth is at the centre of the universe but other
planets appear to orbit the Sun.
Most museums in Germany are closed on a
Monday including the Kepler Museum in Weil der Stadt.
Kepler was educated in German initially
then Latin at seminaries, education to become a Lutheran church minister.
Michael Maestlin was one of Kepler’s teachers and influencers, he revealed
Copernicus’ theory to Kepler in Tubingen University. It was after 4 and a half
years out of 5 of study here to become a minister that is was decided Kepler
was not suitable to become a Lutheran priest because of Calvinism.
He was then posted to Graz as a mathematics
teacher instead. Here is developed idea that force drags planets around the Sun
and weakens with distance from the Sun. Another thing he notices was the
Jupiter and Saturn great conjunction in the sky which happens every 20 years
roughly 20 degrees along from the last. Eventually he had to flee Graz because
of religious persecution, it being a Catholic dominated society, the school
that Kepler taught at now no longer exists.
Prague 1600-1612
Imperial Mathematician to Holy Roman
Emperor. His discoveries here were
·
Elliptical orbits
·
Area orbit sweeps in elliptical
orbit is the same due to the variation in speeds around the ellipse.
·
Using these insights it is
possible to more accurately predict planetary position.
Linz 1612-1626
Kepler had a second marriage. 4 out of his
13 children survived to adulthood which was termed par for the course. There
was the 30 Years War. His mother faced a witch trial – she survived due to
Kepler’s position of responsibility.
He formulated his 3rd law on
Planetary motion about distance from the Sun and the time taken to orbit.
Kepler’s work on optics included:
1.
Explanation of lens corrections
of light for short and long sighted people
2.
Inverse square law for light intensity
3.
Realization that image was
formed upside down on retina in the eye
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