David Aubin - The Heavens on Earth: Observatories and Astronomy in Nineteenth-Century Science and Culture

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Some of the observatories built in the United States during the observatory movement

The Paris Observatory under Le Verrier

The Gambey transit refracting telescope at the Paris Observatory in the 1870s

Gauss measuring the magnetic field of the Earth at the Gttingen Observatory

Table for correcting the times of the rise and setting of the moon; table giving mortality in France as a function of age

Box for posting meteorological warnings

Franois Perriers geodetic station in MSabiha, Algeria

Mr. Perinis Planetary in London

Portrait of the astronomer Palmyrin Rosette in Jules Vernes Off a Comet!

Pulkovo Observatory fifty years after it was built

Portrait of Father Angelo Secchi

The Merz equatorial at the Collegio Romano Observatory

The domes of the Collegio Romano Observatory

Secchis meteorograph

The eclipse of 1870 as drawn by Tacchini

Secchi and collaborators representation of solar prominences

Drawing of the Bay of Wako at the time of the eclipse of August 1868

The camp as photographed by members of the French expedition to Thailand

Portrait of King Mongkut (back and front of photograph)

Savages shooting at the moon during a lunar eclipse in Attopeu

Site of Paramatta Observatory in the mid-twentieth century

Plan of Paramatta Observatory

Portrait of Sir Thomas Brisbane, governor of New South Wales

Sinical quadrant

Bordas standardized sheet for logarithmic trigonometric calculations

Alexis Rochons graphic method for computing corrections to lunar distances

Practical training in the use of sextants on the on-board school Borda

Engraving of the naval observatory in the Montsouris Park, Paris

Meridian and parallel arcs measured on the terrestrial globe between 1615 and 1890

General triangulation of France

Azimuthal reiteration circle

Geodetic junction of France and Algeria

Portrait of General Franois Perrier

Fizeaus ether-drag measurement arrangement (1851); Michelsons ether-drag measurement arrangement (1886)

The Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton during construction in the 1880s

Astronomers on the steps of Yerkes Observatory on 18 October 1897

Telescopes observe the eclipse of 1842

Humboldts and Bonplands Geography of Equinoxial Plants

The Comet: Past, Present, Future

A star map allowing readers to locate the comet of 1843

Public participation in astronomy: the child begs, Papa, let me look

Path of the eclipse of 1842 in southeast France

Table of predicted times for the eclipse of 1842

A page from the Paris Observatory notebook for 1839

The changes in the spectrum of calcium from the Bunsen flame to Sirius

Popular reactions to the eclipse of 1820; peering at Venus on the Place du Chtelet, Paris, in 1889

Simon Archenholds popular observatory in Treptow in 1900

Stage set showing an eclipse of the sun by the earth as seen from the moon

Norman Lockyer arriving in Gibraltar during the eclipse expedition of 1905

W. J. S. Lockyer preparing to observe the Leonid meteor shower (1898-99)

Lockyers observatory in Baikal, India, to observe the solar eclipse of 1871

The great telescope at the Universal Exhibition of 1900

Landscape from the carboniferous age shown at one of Meyers Urania shows

The Uranias theater hall

Faade of the Urania in the Ausstellungspark in Berlin

Cover of the first issue of the Uranias periodical, Himmel und Erde

Observing the solar eclipse of 17 April 1912 at the Urania

Faade of the Urania in the Taubenstrasse

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is the considerably revised outcome of a workshop held and made possible by the Experimental History of Science Independent Research Group of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. We are very grateful to the participants of this workshop, especially Simon Schaffer, who have contributed in numerous ways, both intellectual and material, and been unfailing in their support for this project. We would also like to thank the scholars who read and commented upon early versions of this manuscript, in particular Robert Smith, M. Norton Wise, Dominique Pestre, Marie-Nolle Bourguet, Kapil Raj, and Suman Seth.

The book benefited from funding from the French CNRS, the French Ministry of Research, and the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche for the two follow-up projects to the workshop, entitled Savoirs et techniques de lobservatoire, fin XVIIIe-dbut XXe sicle and De Humboldt Gaa: histoire des sciences du systme-terre. We thank participants to these projects, especially Jrme Lamy, Fabian Locher, Stphane Le Gars, and Arnaud Saint-Martin.

We were greatly assisted by Bettina Schtz in organizing this workshop. For their help in putting this book together we would also like to thank Nina Ruge, Gemma Trival, Madeleine Dietrich, and Ulla-Britt Jansson, as well as Jacob Orrje and Jens Eriksson. Sara Diaz, Melissa Ellis Martin, and Fred Kameny assisted with editing.

Note on the Bibliography

We have paid special attention to the bibliography in the hope of making this book a useful resource for future studies in the history of the observatory sciences. All titles cited more than once feature in the general bibliography at the end of the book, together with some important contributions to the field not cited in the text. All works cited in the bibliography appear only in short form in the chapters notes.

Introduction:
Observatory Techniques in Nineteenth-Century Science and Society

DAVID AUBIN, CHARLOTTE BIGG, AND H. OTTO SIBUM