From Thomas A DOBBINS
©
. . . . . . . Dear Masatsugu:
Thank you for the detailed report. I must confess that the
reserved, skeptical
reaction of your colleagues to the Disciullo and Davis images is quite understandable
-- laudatory, in fact. I was not only surprised but relieved to discover the
Slipher images -- CCD image processing still has a "magical" element
to me, but I do thoroughly understand silver halide photography!
My esteemed
Austrian friend Martin Stangl, a
professor specializing in the history of astronomy who still manages to observe
the planets with a 25cm Newtonian, sends the following reaction from central
"As
for my observation of the bicolored aspect, I looked in my observing book and
found the following facts:
Date:
Time:
19h 30m to 20h 00m U.T.
Instrument:
10" Newtonian, Magn. 255x, "Luft 3"
Location:
In
white light and with Green (VG 9) and Lightblue (W80A)
filters both ansae looked normal, i.e. they where of the same brightness. With
Darkblue filter BG 12 however the following ansa was much dimmer than the
preceding one. I estimated the difference to at least 2 steps on the 0-10 ALPO
albedo scale. The difference was so pronounced, that looking with direct vision
the following ansa could not be glimpsed continuously while the preceding ansa
remained clearly visible all the time. With Dark-Red filter RG 2 and
I tried moving Saturn in the field, rotating
the eyepiece and changing right eye to left eye. The effect always stayed the
same. Saturn was rather high in the sky showing only dim atmospheric
dispersion. Anyhow this effect was north-south, not east-west as in the
bicolored phenomenon, i.e. it was equal for both ansae. Rings were tilted quite
little in november 1996. I did not mention anything that the effect was visible
only in Ring A as you mention in your article as the usual observation of the
phenomenon, but of course I cannot assure that this was NOT the case. Also the
Rings were tilted quite little in november 1996, so Cassini's division was not
too prominent."
So, please keep
the faith and do look for this phenomenon later this year. I believe that this
episode will vindicate visual planetary observers much like the case of Martian
flares!
I would like to
request a favor... The ALPO intends to issue a monograph about Martian flares. Can
you provide images of Saheki, Fukui, and Tasaka (JPEGs
or TIFF) suitable for this publication, preferably beside their
telescopes? In return, I can only promise free copies of the publication.
I do earnestly hope that you will be able to
visit in 2003. Although my latitude is no better than Japan's, the company of
Haas, Heath, Cave, Parker, Beish, Sheehan, etc... will hopefully make this site
in Ohio preferable to Okinawa or even South Africa!!!
Your friend,
(30 June 2002
email)
© . . . . .
. . .Dear
Masatsugu:
Thank
you for including me in this discussion.
Hostility toward Lowell among professional
astronomers in the United States was very pronounced, not only in the heyday of
the canal controversy, but for many decades after Lowell's death in 1916. For
example, the Dutch-born American astronomer Gerard Kuiper (Yerkes
Observatory, University of Arizona Lunar & Planetary Laboratory),
who played a very prominent role in the mid-20th century
"rehabilitation" of planetary astronomy as an academic discipline in
the United States, made some very harsh remarks about Percival Lowell and his
contemporary William Henry Pickering in an address to the Arizona Academy of
Sciences on 29 April, 1967:
"The
canals of Mars were reported by Schiaparelli, a well-known Italian scientist of
the last century, who made them the basis of major speculation on the presence
of intelligent life on Mars. These ideas were taken over by enthusiastic
persons with literary interest in the U.S. [an obvious reference to Lowell]
and further developed. The careful observers with better telescopes who
continued to denounce the canals as optical illusions were castigated. The
controversy brought disrepute to planetary science and weakened its status in
universities. To this day the effects have not been overcome and affect even
NASA programs adversely through inadequate academic scientific support. Mariner
IV seems to have done what these careful observers of the past half century
were unable to do, namely to destroy in the public mind the myth of the canals
of Mars and all it implied...
Before leaving the subject of the Martian
canals it is instructive to see how the cult was perpetuated in the
semi-professional literature for decades. For many years W. H. Pickering, the
brother of the famous Harvard astronomer E. C. Pickering, collected amateur
observations of Martian canals and published the results in 44 reports in
"Popular Astronomy." The amateur observers were rated by the number
of canals they had noted. Thus, there was a premium on reporting many
canals."
Of course, who among us can doubt that the
number of astronomers - amateur or professional - who have been drawn to the
study of Mars would have been much smaller had Lowell continued his career as a
diplomat and scholar of the Far East and not became enamored of the Red
Planet?
(7 July 2002
email)
© . . . . .
. . .Dear
Masatsugu:
About a decade ago Howard Plotkin of the University of Toronto published an excellent article
about W. H. Pickering and Mars entitled "William H. Pickering in Jamaica: The Founding of Woodlawn and Studies
of Mars," Journal for the History
of Astronomy, 24 (1993),
101-22. It contains many interesting
biographical details about this eccentric and often humorous character, who you
may recall was a mentor to Walter Haas in his youth. If you wish, I would be
happy to send you a photostatic copy via air mail.
Meanwhile, I
have attached an unpublished article that Bill Sheehan and I wrote about WHP's
misadventures with the Galilean satellites of Jupiter --our first literary
collaboration (The “Egg-Moons” of Jupiter*). We intend to include a version of
it as a chapter in our forthcoming book about the history of planetary
observing.
Kind regards,
(12 July 2002
email)
*CMO Note: The
article begins as follows: “William Henry Pickering is a name that
evokes both admiration and ridicule. He was a man of ideas, some valuable, a few
seminal, and a diligent observer who will always be remembered for his
photographic discovery of Phoebe, Saturn's ninth satellite, in 1898. But
Pickering was so prone to wildly misinterpret his data that most astronomers of
his day and historians since have had a hard time taking him seriously. In the
words of the late historian of astronomy Joseph Ashbrook, he was a man
"three-fifths of him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge", who despite
being endowed with many gifts -- "skill and perseverance as an observer,
mathematical ability, and literary flair... almost a recipe for greatness” -- in the end seemed to lack only one
quality, though the one most essential -- sound judgment. ………”
© . . . . .
. . .Dear
Masatsugu:
I am very
gratified that you enjoyed this little story. (It
may amuse you to learn that it was rejected for publication by the J BAA.) In
my opinion, a character like Pickering makes for much more interesting reading
than the biography of someone whose life consisted only of a succession of
successes!
By the way, do you own a copy of the recently
published history of selenography
that Bill and I wrote ("Epic Moon")? An
entire chapter is devoted to Pickering. If you do not have a copy, I will
gladly send one with the copy of the Plotkin article.
Kind regards,
(15 July 2002
email)
© . . . . .
. . .Just
to whet your appetite until the book arrives, please see:
http://www.willbell.com/History/Epic%20Moon.htm
(15 July 2002
email)
Tom DOBBINS (Coshocton, OH, USA)