Abstract
Between them the Herschels, father and son, bestrode the astronomical world like colossi. For half a century, they commanded the most powerful telescopes in existence. Th e greatest of all was the 40-foot, with its 48-inch mirror, at Slough. But here William overreached. A glorious failure, difficult, even dangerous, to use, it was never deployed for the study of the nebulae for which it was designed. But it inspired an even more colossal instrument, the “Leviathan,” at Parsonstown (now Birr), Ireland. Built by the wealthiest “Grand Amateur” of his day, William Parsons, the 3rd Earl of Rosse, its mirror, 72 inches in diameter, would not be surpassed until the 20th century. Th e achievement was all the more remarkable, given that at the time Rosse built the telescope, Ireland was an economic basket-case of its day.
Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim th’Ocean stream: Him haply slumb’ring on the Norway foam The Pilot of some small night-foundered Skiff , Deeming some Island, oft, as Seamen tell, With fixèd Anchor in his scaly rind Moors by his side under the Lee, while Night Invests the Sea, and wishèd Morn delays.
—John Milton, Paradise Lost, Bk. 1, 201-208
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References
W. Garrett Scaife, From Galaxies to Turbines: Science, Technology and the Parsons Family (Bristol and Philadelphia: Institute of Physics, 2000), 12.
Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: civility and science in seventeenth-century England (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 132.
Scaife, From Galaxies to Turbines, 31.
Ibid., 31.
Chapman, Victorian Amateur Astronomer, 96.
The first mirror cast (“on the 13th of April 1842 at 9 in the evening”) weighed 3 tons, the second 4 tons, according to Thomas Woods, The Monster Telescopes Erected by the Earl of Rosse… etc, 1st edition, 1844.
Quoted in Simon Schaffer, “On Astronomical Drawing,” in Caroline A. Jones and Peter Galison, eds., Picturing Science: Producing Art, Caroline A. Jones and Peter Galison (New York and London: Routledge, 1998), 456.
Ibid., “On Astronomical Drawing,” 461.
G. B. Airy, “Notice of the Substance of a Lecture on the Large Telescopes of the Earl of Rosse and Mr. Lassell,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 9 (1849):120.
J. South, The Times, April 16, 1845.
T.R. Robinson, manuscript entry in Astronomical Scrapbook: 3rd and 4Thearl of Rosse, quoted in Michael Hoskin, Stellar Astronomy (Chalfont St. Giles: Science History Publications, 1982), 145.
S.J. O’Meara, “Méchain’s unsung discovery,” Sky & Telescope, September 2006, 62-63.
Sir Bernard Lovell, quoted in Patrick Moore, The Astronomy of Birr Castle (Birr: The Telescope Trust, 1971), 49.
William Parsons, “On the construction of specula of six-feet diameter; and a selection of observations of nebulae made with them,” Phil. Trans., 1861, 681-745.
Sir John Herschel, Outlines of Astronomy (Philadelphia: Blanchard and Lea, 1861), 512.
Schaffer, “On Astronomical Drawing,” 462.
Hoskin, Stellar Astronomy, 145.
Memoirs of Chief Justice Lefroy, Dublin: Hodges, Foster & Co., 1871.
Brendon, Decline and Fall, 122.
Rosse, “Observations on the Nebulae,” Phil. Trans., 1850, 499-514.
For a complete discussion of the use of the term “whirlpool” for this object, see: William Tobin, “Full-text search capability: a new tool for researching the development of scientific language. The ‘Whirlpool Nebula’ as a case study.” Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 62, 2 (20 June 2008),187-196.
Henry C. King, The History of the Telescope (New York: Dover, 1979 reprint of 1955 edition), 212.
William Cranch Bond, “[Letter to President Everett],” American Journal of Science and Arts, Series 2, no. 4 (1847), 427.
W.C. Bond had three sons and two daughters. The sons were W.C., Jr., who died while a student at Harvard or just afterward, G.P., whose fame as an astronomer equaled his father’s, and Richard Fifield Bond, who observed with the 15-inch at Harvard and helped run the family chronometer business; the daughters were Elizabeth Lidstone and Selina Cranch.
John Pringle Nichol, Views of the Architecture of the Heavens in a Series of Letters to a Lady (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1837), 129.
George Phillips Bond, “Account of the Great Comet of 1858,” Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, 3 (1862).
The last two were discovered by Harvard College Observatory assistant Horace P. Tuttle. A great deal of useful information about Tuttle and the early history of Harvard College Observatory is found in Richard E. Schmidt, “The Tuttles of Harvard College Observatory: 1850-1862,” The Antiquarian Astronomer, 6 (January 2012), 74-104.
Asaph Hall, “My Connection with the Harvard College Observatory and the Bonds—1857-62,” in Edward Singleton Holden, Memorials of William Cranch Bond and of His Son George Phillips Bond (San Francisco: Holden and Day, 1897), 78-79.
Edward Singleton Holden, “Monograph of the Central Parts of the Nebula of Orion,” Washington Astronomical Observations for 1878, Appendix I (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1882), 227.
During that year 1862, Alvan Clark, the telescope- maker, was testing the 18.5-inch objective that eventually went to Dearborn Observatory, in a temporary mount at his workshop in Cambridge. It was used to discover the companion of Sirius, and later was turned to the Orion Nebula. One of the observers, H.P. Tuttle, described the occasion: “Mr. Clark at once adjusted the telescope on the celebrated nebula in the sword handle of Orion. With a far less powerful telescope than this, the most wonderful of all nebulous objects presents a spectacle surpassing all description; but the view which this telescope revealed was gorgeous and striking far beyond any view ever before obtained of it. Stars of every conceivable telescopic magnitude were scattered over the brilliant mottled nebulous mass, and blaze upon the eyes with great distinctness and splendor. The remarkable sextuple star θ1 Orionis, disclosed to view its two minutes members, which stood out clear and prominent…How many of the innumerable stars in the field had been before noted by astronomers, it was impossible to tell from so general an observation. The grand nebula was most admirably defined, and the luminous ridges of its granular structure seemed almost ready to bloom into swarms of individual minute stars, and especially so in that part where its form assumes a kind of rude resemblance to the head and yawning jaws of a monster.”
Bessie Zaban Jones and Lyle Gifford Boyd, The Harvard College Observatory: the first four directorships, 1839-1919 (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971), 133.
Ibid., 133. The line quoted is from Jeremiah 10:23: “O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.”
Edward Sabine, “President’s Address,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 13 (1863-64):500.
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Sheehan, W., Conselice, C.J. (2015). Of Leviathans, Spirals, and Fire-Mists. In: Galactic Encounters. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-85347-5_5
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