Essays on Astronomical History and Heritage: A Tribute to Wayne Orchiston on his 80th Birthday (Historical & Cultural Astronomy) 3031294920, 9783031294921

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Historical & Cultural Astronomy Series Editors: W. Orchiston · M. Rothenberg · C. Cunningham

Steven Gullberg Peter Robertson Editors

Essays on Astronomical History and Heritage A Tribute to Wayne Orchiston on his 80th Birthday

Historical & Cultural Astronomy Series Editors WAYNE ORCHISTON, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, China MARC ROTHENBERG, Smithsonian Institution (retired), Rockville, MD, USA CLIFFORD CUNNINGHAM, University of Southern Queensland Toowoomba, QLD, Australia Editorial Board TRUDY BELL, Sky & Telescope, Lakewood, OH, USA DAVID DEVORKIN, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, USA JAMES EVANS, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA, USA MILLER GOSS, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, USA DUANE HAMACHER, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia JAMES LEQUEUX, Observatoire de Paris, Paris, France SIMON MITTON, St. Edmund's College Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK CLIVE RUGGLES, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK VIRGINIA TRIMBLE, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA GUDRUN WOLFSCHMIDT, Institute for History of Science and Technology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

The Historical & Cultural Astronomy series includes high-level monographs and edited volumes covering a broad range of subjects in the history of astronomy, including interdisciplinary contributions from historians, sociologists, horologists, archaeologists, and other humanities fields. The authors are distinguished specialists in their fields of expertise. Each title is carefully supervised and aims to provide an in-depth understanding by offering detailed research. Rather than focusing on the scientific findings alone, these volumes explain the context of astronomical and space science progress from the pre-modern world to the future. The interdisciplinary Historical & Cultural Astronomy series offers a home for books addressing astronomical progress from a humanities perspective, encompassing the influence of religion, politics, social movements, and more on the growth of astronomical knowledge over the centuries. The Historical & Cultural Astronomy Series Editors are: Wayne Orchiston, Marc Rothenberg, and Cliff Cunningham.

Steven Gullberg  •  Peter Robertson Editors

Essays on Astronomical History and Heritage A Tribute to Wayne Orchiston on his 80th Birthday

Editors Steven Gullberg College of Professional and Continuing Studies University of Oklahoma Norman, OK, USA

Peter Robertson School of Physics University of Melbourne Parkville, VIC, Australia

ISSN 2509-310X     ISSN 2509-3118 (electronic) Historical & Cultural Astronomy ISBN 978-3-031-29492-1    ISBN 978-3-031-29493-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29493-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023, Corrected Publication 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image credit: The Trifid Nebula. Watercolor by Jessica Gullberg. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Wayne Orchiston and the History of Astronomy Throughout his long career, Wayne Orchiston has worked tirelessly to advance the history of astronomy in many ways. His accomplishments have been and continue to be so immense that we are often left wondering if he ever sleeps. While we have no allusions of ever exceeding Wayne’s productivity, he has long served as a role model with regard to our own pursuits and contributions. It is our privilege to honor Wayne in this way by serving as the editors of this volume. Wayne is a New Zealander, and having grown up there, he was taken by astronomy when his father moved the family from Christchurch to the relatively dark skies of Lincoln. Wayne joined the Canterbury Astronomical Society at age 12, and two  years later, he gave a lecture on ‘Solar Flares and their Terrestrial Effects.’ Wayne’s fascination with astronomy grew through the skies he observed and with the books he read. His family moved again in 1958; this time to Sydney, Australia, where he met with astronomers at the Sydney Observatory and eventually joined the New South Wales branch of the British Astronomical Society. This allowed Wayne to borrow a telescope and make regular observations of sunspots and faculae, planets, lunar craters, and variable stars. He was able to make further observations using the observatory’s telescopes and carried out later observations for Bruce Slee, whom he came to work for at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Radiophysics Laboratory and later, again, at the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF). In 1961, Wayne was appointed as a technical assistant to Bruce Slee in the Radiophysics Laboratory in Sydney. Since that time, he has held a series of careeradvancing positions while he lived through vast advancements in the field of astronomy over the last six decades. In 1973, he became a post-doctoral research fellow in prehistory and ethnohistory at the University of Melbourne. This experience would serve to mold his passion for the history of astronomy and ethnoastronomy. In 1983, he became a Senior Lecturer in astronomy and served as the Head of the astronomy unit at Victoria College in Melbourne. In 1988, Wayne became the Director of the v

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Fig. 1  Front cover and title page of the first issue of Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage in 1998. The issue featured five research papers, including ones by Steven Dick (US Naval Observatories, Washington DC), Jay M.  Pasachoff (Williams College–Hopkins Observatory, Massachusetts), and Wayne Orchiston (Carter Observatory, New Zealand). (Courtesy: Wayne Orchiston)

Gisborne Museum and Arts Centre in Gisborne, New Zealand. Several years later, in 1993, he served as the Head of the Public Programs Group at the Carter Observatory in Wellington and just a year later became its Executive Director. At the turn of the millennium, in 2000, Wayne became the archivist and historian for the ATNF in Sydney. In 2005, Wayne became a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Astronomy at James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland. He was later promoted to Associate Professor of Astronomy in 2008. Later on, Wayne served as a Visiting Professor, Senior Researcher, and Specialist at the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT). In 1998, Wayne and his colleague John Perdrix founded the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage (JAHH) (see Fig. 1). This highly respected journal has evolved with an international editorial board and now five excellent associate editors as well. In 2010, the journal transitioned from a print-based subscription journal to an open-access e-journal where it has since grown from two issues per year to four. In August 2022, the journal moved to the University of Science and Technology of China (UTSC) where Wayne is currently employed as co-editor alongside UTSC Professor Shi Yunli. Wayne has published just over one-third of his research papers in JAHH since its founding in 1998. Additionally, Wayne currently

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serves as an Adjunct Chair in Astronomy in the Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). Wayne is the original editor of Springer’s Historical and Cultural Astronomy book series and has recently been joined by two co-editors, Marc Rothenberg and Cliff Cunningham. Both Marc and Cliff’s services were needed due to the success of the series and the high workload it demands. Cliff is one of Wayne’s former PhD students at USQ.  In addition, Wayne is the radio astronomy thematic editor of Springer’s third edition of the Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Describing Wayne as both a prolific researcher and author seems like an understatement. He has published well over 500 books, research papers, book reviews, obituaries, encyclopedia entries, plus more, with approximately 450 of them devoted to the history of astronomy. Wayne’s research ranges far and wide with papers regarding activities in many different countries on numerous topics, including niche areas like the history of radio astronomy, applied historical astronomy, astronomical archives, the history of astrophysics and solar physics, the history of meteoritics, and ethnoastronomy. He has conducted ethnoastronomical research in Southeast Asia to investigate changing and evolving astronomical systems by combining interdisciplinary data drawn from anthropology, genetics, geology, history, linguistics, prehistory, and paleaoanthropology. This is an exciting new approach for researchers and has generated extraordinary results. Wayne is also quite the planner as he regularly organized conference activities that include Commission C41/C3 International Astronomical Union (IAU) history of astronomy programs at IAU General Assemblies from 2003 to 2018. Wayne also arranged single ‘birthday’ conferences for Woody Sullivan (WoodFest) and Richard Stephenson (StephensonFest), both of which led to Springer books. He has organized three Southeast Asian history of astronomy conferences and has maintained active involvement in International Conferences on Oriental Astronomy (ICOA) from 2004 to the present. Overall, Wayne has been either the editor or co-editor of 14 books, with 7 of them devoted to the growth of astronomy and astrophysics in the Asia-Pacific region. Wayne joined the IAU in 1985 and has attended most of its General Assemblies since 1994. On several occasions, he has even served on the C41/C3 Organizing Committee beginning in 1997. He served as Secretary of Commission C41 as well as both Vice-President and President of Commission C3 for the History of Astronomy. He was active in the Archives and in the Historical Instruments Working Groups. He was also the founding Chair of the Transits of Venus (2000) and the Historical Radio Astronomy (2003) Working Groups. Wayne has served on the American Astronomical Society Historical Astronomy Division Executive Committee and the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand Committee and was the former President and Vice-President of the Astronomical Society of Victoria, which is Australia’s largest astronomical society for both amateur and professional astronomers. Wayne was also the former President and Vice-President of the British Astronomical Association’s New South Wales Branch, Australia’s oldest astronomical society, again, for both amateur and professional astronomers.

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Fig. 2  Four of Wayne’s PhD students at James Cook University in March 2009 (from left): Harry Wendt, Ron Stewart, Peter Robertson, Alex Hohns (JCU staff), and John Pearson. (Courtesy: Peter Robertson)

Wayne designed and taught Master of Astronomy degree programs at the University of Western Sydney (UWS) and at James Cook University (JCU) while supervising the mini theses of his students. He also supervised 17 JCU and USQ history of astronomy PhD students through to completion, with one still in progress (see, e.g., Fig. 2). Wayne has an extensive amount of research experience that includes: • History of Cook voyage astronomy • Research of Australian, British, Chinese, French, Georgian, German, Indian, Indonesian, Iranian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Myanmar, New Zealand, Philippines, South African, Thai, Turkish, and US astronomy (while at Victoria College, Gisborne Museum & Arts Centre, Carter Observatory, AngloAustralian Observatory, Australia Telescope National Facility, James Cook University, NARIT, the University of Southern Queensland) • Research of Indian, Indonesian, New Zealand Maori, Philippines, and Thailand ethnoastronomy (while at Carter Observatory, Anglo-Australian Observatory, James Cook University, NARIT, the University of Southern Queensland)

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• Research of astronomical education (while at Victoria College, Carter Observatory, University of Western Sydney, James Cook University, NARIT) • Research of meteoritics (while at Gisborne Museum & Arts Centre, Carter Observatory, Anglo-Australian Observatory, James Cook University, NARIT, the University of Southern Queensland) • Research of solar, planetary, and galactic radio astronomy (while at Radiophysics Laboratory, Australia Telescope National Facility) • Research of museology (while at University of Melbourne, Victoria College, Gisborne Museum & Arts Centre, Carter Observatory, Australia Telescope National Facility) • Research of Australian and Indonesian geology (while at University of Melbourne, Victoria College); research of Australian, Indonesian, and Philippines hominid palaeontology, prehistory, and quaternary studies (while at University of Melbourne, Victoria College, NARIT, the University of Southern Queensland) • And research of New Zealand prehistory, ethnology, and ethnohistory (while at University of Melbourne, Victoria College, Gisborne Museum & Arts Centre) Wayne maintains professional affiliations with the Antique Telescope Society, the British Astronomical Association, the Historical Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society, the International Astronomical Union in its commissions on Radio Astronomy and History of Astronomy, the International Society for Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture (ISAAC), and the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand. We note that in 2013, the International Astronomical Society named minor planet ‘48471 Orchiston’ in recognition of Wayne’s international contributions to the History of Astronomy (see Fig. 3). In 2019, Wayne and Stella Cottam shared the Donald E.  Osterbrock Prize awarded by the American Astronomical Society for their book Eclipses, Transits, and Comets of the Nineteenth Century: How America’s Perception of the Sky Changed (Fig. 4). Wayne also received a University Medal from the University of Sydney for his BA Honors result – the first time in 11 years that this Medal was awarded. We are saddened to note the recent passing of two of our WayneFest contributors, Jay M. Pasachoff and William Tobin.

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Fig. 3  Minor planet ‘48471 Orchiston’: Images taken in September 2021 by John Drummond near Gisborne on the North Island of New Zealand. John used a 35-cm Schmidt–Cassegrain telescope with the minor planet in Aquarius at magnitude 17: (above) Images stacked on the stars showing 48471 Orchiston’s streak at center; (below) images stacked on 48471 Orchiston at center showing the star streaks. (Courtesy: John Drummond)

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Fig. 4  Wayne and Stella Cottam at the launch of their prize-winning book Eclipses, Transits, and Comets of the Nineteenth Century. The launch took place at an American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle in January 2019. (Courtesy: Stella Cottam)

As former students of Wayne, we owe him a tremendous debt. Editing this festschrift for him is one way to say thank you. Wayne impacted many other students as well and the overall effect upon the History of Astronomy due to Wayne’s decades of tireless service is profound. His contributions have been, and continue to be, tremendous. We look forward to many more in the years to come! Norman, OK, USA Parkville, VIC, Australia January 2023

Steven Gullberg Peter Robertson

Contents

Preface: Wayne Orchiston and the History of Astronomy��������������������������    v Steven Gullberg and Peter Robertson About the Contributors ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   xvii Part I Astronomy and Society 1 Cosmos  and Culture: Linking the Heavens and the Earth������������������    3 Steven J. Dick 2 Sweden’s  Thirty Days in February: Calendar Reform������������������������   31 Lars Gislén 3 Early  Star Charts of the Dutch East India Company��������������������������   39 Richard de Grijs 4 The  Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations: A Scientific, Technical, Political, Social, and Cultural Adventure����������������������������   57 Kenneth I. Kellermann 5 What’s  in a Name? That Which We Call Anders’ Earthrise, as ‘Pasteur T,’ Didn’t Sound as Sweet (Adventures in Lunar Exploration and Nomenclature on the Fiftieth Anniversary of Apollo 8)������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   79 William Sheehan 6 The  Life and Science of Léon Foucault as a Muse��������������������������������  113 William Tobin Part II Emergence of Astrophysics 7 The  Mere Fanciful Abstractions of Science ������������������������������������������  145 Alan H. Batten

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8 Henry  Norris Russell’s Campaign to Make Physics the Core of Astrophysics������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  157 David H. DeVorkin 9 Astronomical Travels in Asia������������������������������������������������������������������  171 John Hearnshaw 10 The  Discovery of the Coma Cluster of Galaxies�����������������������������������  225 Wolfgang Steinicke 11 From  Aircraft Carriers to the Cosmos: Comparing and Contrasting the Careers of John Bolton and Joseph Weber��������  239 Virginia Trimble and Peter Robertson Part III History of Radio Astronomy 12 Grote Reber in Tasmania������������������������������������������������������������������������  255 Martin George 13 Wayne  Orchiston and the History of Radio Astronomy����������������������  277 James Lequeux 14 The  Hole-in-the-Ground Telescope and the Discovery of the Galactic Centre������������������������������������������������������������������������������  283 Peter Robertson 15 Remains  of the Day: Historical Remnants of the CSIRO Radiophysics Field Stations��������������������������������������������������������������������  295 Harry Wendt 16 History  of Cosmic Magnetic Fields��������������������������������������������������������  313 Richard Wielebinski Part IV Solar System 17 ‘Where’s  Waldo?’ Leonard Waldo and the 1878 Total Solar Eclipse in Fort Worth, Texas ������������������������������������������������������������������  331 Stella Cottam 18 The  Evolution of ‘Meteor’ as an Astronomical Trope 1560–1760 ������  341 Clifford J. Cunningham 19 New  Zealand Observations of the Great Comet of 1881, C/1881 K1 (Tebbutt)��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  367 John K. Drummond 20 Solar  Eclipses, Wayne Orchiston, and Me ��������������������������������������������  393 Jay M. Pasachoff

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21 Politics  and the Dimensions of the Solar System: John Winthrop’s Observations of the Transits of Venus����������������������  401 Sara J. Schechner 22 Investigation  of Shang Dynasty Oracle Bones and Eclipses����������������  429 F. Richard Stephenson, Leslie V. Morrison, Catherine Y. Hohenkerk, and Han Yanben 23 On  Jean-Charles Houzeau and Hilmar Duerbeck: How Transits of Venus Molded Their Late Professional Lives������������  439 Christiaan Sterken 24 William  Herschel and the Moon ������������������������������������������������������������  449 Woodruff T. Sullivan III Part V Observatories and Instrumentation 25 The  ‘Nashville Trio’ of Astronomers at the Dyer Observatory in Tennessee: Carl Seyfert, Robert Hardie and John Dewitt��������������  481 Jana Ruth Ford 26 Early  Photometers at the Royal Observatory, Cape����������������������������  497 Ian S. Glass 27 Evolutions  in the History of Visual Time Signals for Mariners ����������  523 Roger Kinns 28 Closing  Encounters: The Efforts of the NSW Branch of the British Astronomical Association to Save Sydney Observatory����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  557 Nick Lomb 29 Finding  Colonial New Zealand’s Place in the World: Astronomy and a Geodesical Surveyor��������������������������������������������������  583 Glen Rowe Part VI Ethnoastronomy & Archaeoastronomy 30 Inca Cultural Astronomy������������������������������������������������������������������������  615 Steven Gullberg 31 The  Astronomy of the Aboriginal Peoples of the Sydney Basin����������  635 Robert S. Fuller and Duane W. Hamacher 32 U  sing the Significant Horizons Methodology to Determine Potential Astronomical Use of Aboriginal Stone Arrangements����������  661 Trevor M. Leaman and Duane W. Hamacher

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33 Astronomical  Phenomena in Premodern Armenian and Georgian Written Sources ��������������������������������������������������������������  681 Jefferson Sauter Correction to: What’s in a Name? That Which We Call Anders’ Earthrise, as ‘Pasteur T,’ Didn’t Sound as Sweet (Adventures in Lunar Exploration and Nomenclature on the Fiftieth Anniversary of Apollo 8)��������������������������������������������������������  C1 William Sheehan Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  697

About the Contributors

Alan  H.  Batten studied at the Universities of St Andrews and Manchester and then came to the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Victoria, BC, Canada. He has held temporary positions at the Instituto de Astronomia y Fisica del Espacio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, and at the University of Victoria, and spent a sabbatical at the Vatican Observatory in Castelgandolfo, Italy. He has been President of the former IAU Commissions 30 and 42, a Vice-President of the IAU, and visited several developing countries on behalf of the IAU. In 1977, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Stella Cottam was born in New York City in 1949 and has B.S. degrees in physics and medical technology from Fordham University and the University of Nevada, respectively, an MLIS in library science from the University of Kentucky, and a Master of Astronomy from the University of Western Sydney in Australia. In 2012 she graduated with a Ph.D. from James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. Her thesis topic was ‘Solar Eclipses and Transits of Venus, 1868–1882, and their Role in the Popularisation of Astronomy in the USA,’ supervised by Wayne Orchiston and Richard Stephenson. She subsequently wrote a book based in large part on this thesis, Eclipses, Transits and Comets of the Nineteenth Century: How America’s Perception of the Skies Changed, in collaboration with Wayne Orchiston, which won the 2019 Donald E. Osterbrock Book Prize for Historical Astronomy. She is currently xvii

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working on a book on the history of the Cincinnati Observatory in collaboration with their historian, John E. Ventre. She is a member of the Cincinnati Observatory, the American Astronomical Society, Historical Astronomy Division, and the International Astronomical Union. Clifford J. Cunningham earned his Ph.D. in the history of astronomy at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia (under the supervision of Dr Wayne Orchiston), where he is now a Research Fellow in the Astrophysics Group. His undergraduate degrees in physics and classical studies were earned at the University of Waterloo in Canada. He has published 15 books on the history of astronomy: Introduction to Asteroids (in 1988), a 5-­volume series on nineteenth-century asteroid research, 7 volumes to date in the Collected Correspondence of Baron Franz von Zach, and (as editor) The Scientific Legacy of William Herschel. His most recent book, published in 2021, is Asteroids by Reaktion Press. He is currently editing one of six volumes in Bloomsbury’s Cultural History of the Universe, and a book on the three comets of 1618. He was appointed by Springer as a Series Editor of their Historical & Cultural Astronomy books in 2019, and is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage (JAHH), a contributor to Encyclopedia Britannica, and since 2001 has been the history of astronomy columnist for Mercury magazine. His scientific research ranging from ancient astronomy to Milton’s Paradise Lost has been published in many leading journals, including Journal for the History of Astronomy, Culture and Cosmos, Renaissance & Reformation, JAHH, and Annals of Science. Asteroid (4276) was named Clifford in his honor in 1990 by the International Astronomical Union based on the recommendation of its bureau, the Harvard-­ Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In 2020 he was elected to membership in the International Astronomical Union. In 1999 he appeared on the Star Trek television show Deep Space Nine as a human Starfleet officer and has had tea with The Queen.

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David H. DeVorkin is Senior Curator Emeritus of the History of Astronomy at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. Retiring in April 2020 after 40 years at the Museum, following a decade on the faculty of Central Connecticut State College where he taught astronomy and the earth sciences, building a planetarium and observatory in the process, he is happily burrowing into his considerable backlog of research interests, including at present a biographical study of the astronomer George R.  Carruthers. DeVorkin was born in Los Angeles, California in 1944, attended UCLA, San Diego State, and Yale studying astronomy, working as an observer at Lick Observatory in 1965, at Yerkes Observatory in 1966, and as a guide at the Griffith Observatory, 1961–1966. After obtaining an M.Phil. in astronomy in 1970 from Yale, exposed to the historians of science next door, and then preparing lectures for his classes in the early 1970s, he became enamored with the question ‘how did physics get into astronomy?’ which led to a Ph.D. in the history of astronomy in 1978 from the University of Leicester under the watchful eye of Jack Meadows. To date he has written some 20 books and some 150 articles and essays in the history of astronomy, curated several major exhibitions at the Museum, and collected hundreds of instruments and detectors in the hope that they illustrate how new tools of perception have repeatedly led to the realization that the Universe is not what we thought it was. Steven J. Dick served as the NASA Chief Historian and Director of the NASA History Office from 2003 to 2009. Prior to that he was an astronomer and historian of science at the U.S. Naval Observatory for more than two decades. He was the 2014 Baruch S.  Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress’s John W. Kluge Center. In 2013 he testified before the United States Congress on the subject of astrobiology. From 2011 to 2012, he held the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History at the National Air and Space Museum. He is the author or editor of 25 books, including most recently Astrobiology, Discovery, and Societal Impact (Cambridge, 2018), Classifying the Cosmos: How We Can Make Sense of the Celestial Landscape (Springer, 2019), and Space, Time, and Aliens: Collected Works on Cosmos and Culture (Springer, 2020).

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In 2006, Dick received the LeRoy E. Doggett Prize from the American Astronomical Society for a career that has significantly influenced the field of the history of astronomy. He is the recipient of the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, the Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Medal, and the NASA Group Achievement Award for his work on astrobiology. He has served as President of the History of Astronomy Commission of the International Astronomical Union and as Chair of the Historical Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow of the American Astronomical Society. Minor planet 6544 Stevendick was named in his honor. More information at http:// www.stevenjdick.com/index.html John K. Drummond became fixated with astronomy at the age of 10 when his late mother pointed out the Pot in Orion to him. He was hooked on the Universe! Joining the Gisborne Astronomical Society, John would regularly do group meteor watches (when he saw his first comet, C/1973 E1 (Kohoutek)). He also developed an interest in photography and combined these and began astrophotography. John’s astrophotos have been used in many overseas books and magazines – and were used on two New Zealand stamps. He was the Director of the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand’s (RASNZ) Astrophotography Section for 13 years until 2018. John lives near Gisborne, on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island, and has a range of telescopes up to 0.5 m in diameter. He regularly carries out astrometry of comets and transients and sends his observations to the Minor Planet Center. In 2021, John made 1006 observations (the second highest number in New Zealand  – after the University of Canterbury’s Mount John Observatory). John has also confirmed several comets. His Possum Observatory has the MPC code E94. He is the Director of the RASNZ Comet and Meteor Section. John has co-discovered about 20 exoplanets in collaboration with the Ohio State University. He is a coauthor of more than 60 research papers and is also a contributing editor for the Australian Sky and Telescope magazine. He enjoys giving talks around NZ on

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historically famous astronomers and general astronomy. He also runs an astro-tourism business. John was the President of the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand from 2016 to 2018 and is currently the Society’s Executive Secretary; in 2019 he was made a Fellow of RASNZ. In 2016, John was awarded an M.Sc. (astronomy) by Swinburne University (Melbourne). He is currently researching the history of cometary astronomy from New Zealand as a part-time extramural Ph.D. student at the University of Southern Queensland, co-supervised by Dr Carolyn Brown and Professor Wayne Orchiston. When not doing astronomy, John is a science teacher. He enjoys surfing the great waves of Gisborne and pottering around on his small farm tending to his sheep. Jana Ruth Ford as an undergraduate at Vanderbilt doubled majored in mathematics and physics–astronomy and so had two undergraduate advisors. Dr James R. Wesson was her math advisor and a superb professor. He chose Ford to be one of three undergraduate teaching assistants for the Math Department in her senior year which was her introduction to teaching. After working for several years in circuit design and transmission engineering for AT&T, Ford realized her true calling was in academia. Having the experience of teaching both as an undergraduate and graduate teaching assistant in mathematics, she found a position as a math instructor at Columbia State Community College and was encouraged by Dr Wesson to apply. This is where her real training in teaching occurred. After a few years teaching math, she decided to return to her first love. She was bitten by the astronomy bug early in life and she never recovered. After earning a Master’s degree in astronomy and while working on her Ph.D., she sent an application for a position in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Middle Tennessee State University. She was hired as an instructor and promoted to Assistant Professor upon completion of her Ph.D.  She teaches physics and astronomy lectures and labs and is now the Astronomy Lab Coordinator. She has been teaching at MTSU since 2004 and still enjoys her work. She would not be in this wonderful position now if Wayne had not convinced her to go for the Ph.D. in astronomy!

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Robert S. Fuller is a late returnee to academia after a 45-year break for a career in, first, the military and, then, industry. He was tertiary educated as an anthropologist/archaeologist, and much later, after retiring, did a research M.Phil. at Macquarie University, Sydney, on Indigenous astronomy, publishing on the cultural astronomy of the Kamilaroi and Euahlayi peoples of New South Wales. He has completed a Ph.D. at the School of Humanities and Languages, University of NSW, researching the cultural astronomy and songlines of the Saltwater Aboriginal peoples of the New South Wales Coast, under the supervision of Duane Hamacher (University of Melbourne) and Dan Robinson (University of NSW). He is now an Adjunct Fellow at the School of Science, Western Sydney University. He has been active in outreach to the non-Indigenous community through lectures and non-academic articles and was the instigator of the successful documentary on Euahlayi astronomy, ‘Star Stories of the Dreaming.’ He has been giving public and academic talks about cultural astronomy for some years and is actively involved in outreach to the broader public regarding Indigenous Knowledge Systems. He has also been involved in amateur astronomy through the Northern Sydney Astronomical Society and served as President and in other office positions. Martin  George is Principal Astronomer at the Hive Planetarium in Ulverstone, Tasmania, Australia, which opened in November 2021. He is an active member of the International Planetarium Society, having served as its President in 2005–2006, and is currently its Chair of International Development. Martin is an active communicator of astronomy, is a prolific author of articles in newspapers and magazines, and is often interviewed on radio and television in Australia. In 2009, he received both the Astronomical Society of Australia’s David Allen Prize for the communication of astronomy and the Science Teachers’ Association of Tasmania’s Winifred Curtis Medal for excellence in science education. Martin has a keen interest in astronomical history. He has authored and co-authored a number of papers on low-frequency radio astronomy research that took place in Tasmania from the three decades beginning in 1955,

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with his Ph.D. work on this subject having been supervised by Prof. Wayne Orchiston, Prof. Richard Wielebinski, Prof. Bradley Carter. and Dr Bruce Slee. He has also co-authored papers on historical eclipses in Thailand. Martin is a member of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Working Group on Historic Radio Astronomy. Lars Gislén is a former Lector (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Theoretical Physics at the University of Lund, Sweden, and retired in 2003. In 1970 and 1971, he obtained his Ph.D. in the Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, Faculté des Sciences, at Orsay, France. He has been doing research in theoretical elementary particle physics, complex systems and applications of physics in biology, and in atmospheric physics. During the past 20  years, he has developed several computer programs and Excel spreadsheets implementing calendars and medieval astronomical models from Europe, India, and Southeast Asia. He has published more than 30 papers on medieval and Southeast Asian astronomy and calendars. He has also participated as a delegation leader in the International Physics Olympiad from 1982 to 2012 and the past 5 years as an independent judge in the International Young Physicists’ Tournament. I an  S.  Glass was born in Dublin in 1939 and studied initially at Trinity College where he was a Foundation Scholar and obtained a B.A.  First Class in Natural Sciences. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from MIT and held post-doctoral appointments there, at Caltech and at the Royal Greenwich Observatory. Most of his career has been spent at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO). His early work was in x-ray astronomy and stellar interferometry. He brought infrared techniques to SAAO and made contributions in several fields such as active galaxies (reverberation studies of AGNs) and late-type stars (the P-L relation for Miras in particular). He has written a textbook on Infrared Astronomy and several books on historical astronomical themes including the Grubb telescope company, N-L de la Caille, and the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope. He has travelled widely and has spent various periods in Cambridge (non-Mass), ESO,

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NAOJ, and IAP (Paris). In retirement he has sought to conserve the astronomical heritage of South Africa and has agitated successfully for the former Royal Observatory to be declared a National Heritage Site. Richard  de  Grijs obtained his Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Groningen (Netherlands) in 1997. He subsequently held postdoctoral research positions at the University of Virginia (USA) and the University of Cambridge (UK), before being appointed to a permanent post at the University of Sheffield (UK) in 2003. He joined the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University (China) in September 2009 as a full Professor. In March 2018, Richard moved to Macquarie University in Sydney (Australia) as Associate Dean (Global Engagement). Richard was a Scientific Editor of The Astrophysical Journal since 2006 and took on the role of Deputy Editor of The Astrophysical Journal Letters in September 2012. He held this latter role until mid-2018. He has joined the Editorial Team of the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage as an Associate Editor in early 2021. Richard received the 2012 Selby Award for excellence in science from the Australian Academy of Science, a 2013 Visiting Academy Professorship at Leiden University from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, a 2017 Erskine Award from the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), as well as a Jan Michalski Award from the Michalski Foundation (Switzerland), also in 2017. His research focuses on the astronomical distance scale, as well as on many aspects of star cluster physics, from their stellar populations to their dynamics and their use as star-formation tracers in distant galaxies. He is also engaged in a number of research projects related to the history of astronomy, with particular emphasis on maritime navigation in the seventeenth century. In 2017, he published Time and Time Again: Determination of Longitude at Sea in the 17th Century (IOP Publishing). On Sundays, Richard can be found at the Australian National Maritime Museum as volunteer guide on any of the Museum’s historical vessels, which include replicas of Captain Cook’s H.M.B. Endeavour and of the Dutch East India Company’s yacht Duyfken. The latter made the first recorded European landing on Australian soil (Cape York), in 1606.

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Steven  Gullberg holds a Ph.D. in astronomy from James Cook University and is Professor of Cultural Astronomy at the University of Oklahoma, where he is Lead Faculty for the School of Integrative and Cultural Studies. He serves as Chair of the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) Working Group for Astronomy in Culture, is a member of the IAU Working Group on Star Names, and as well is Chair of a joint committee of the IAU, Royal Astronomical Society, and American Astronomical Society for Indigenous concerns at culturally sensitive observatory sites. He has conducted extensive field research on the astronomy of the Incas in the Peruvian Andes and has written many related papers. At the University of Oklahoma, he led the development of archaeoastronomy distance-learning courses designed to educate students around the world. Additionally, Steven is the Managing Editor of the Journal of Astronomy in Culture, and he regularly presents papers at international conferences in his endeavors to globally advance the field of Cultural Astronomy. Duane W. Hamacher is Associate Professor of Cultural Astronomy in the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne and a member of the ASTRO-3D Centre of Excellence. His work focuses on astronomical heritage and Indigenous astronomical knowledge (Australia, SE Asia and the Pacific), dark sky studies, the history and philosophy of science, and archaeoastronomy. He holds honorary Adjunct Professorships in Astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland, in Geography at the University of the Sunshine Coast, and in Archaeoastronomy at the National Autonomous University of Honduras. Duane has published extensively in a number of books and journals, including Archaeoastronomy, Australian Archaeology, Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage (JAHH), Mediterranean Archaeology & Archaeometry, Rock Art Research, The Australian Journal of Anthropology, WGN  – Journal of the International Meteor Organization, and more. He is Vice-President of the International Society of Archeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture; Chair of the IAU C1-C3-C4 Working Group in Ethnoastronomy

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and Intangible Heritage; a member of the IAU Working Group on Star Names; and an Associate Editor of Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage. He works as a public speaker; presented at TEDx Northern Sydney Institute (2013); was featured in the National Geographic documentary ‘The Story of God with Morgan Freeman’ (2016) and the Warwick Thornton film ‘We Don’t Need a Map’ (2017); and was a consultant on the upcoming Werner Herzog film ‘Fireball’ (2020). Duane served as a heritage expert for UNESCO; works as a consultant and curator for theater productions, art and museum exhibitions, commemorative coins, tourism, education programs, urban design; and has written Indigenous Astronomy into the Australian National Curriculum. John Hearnshaw is Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. He was Chair of the IAU Program Group for the World-Wide Development of Astronomy (PGWWDA) from 2003 to 2012; President of IAU Division C for Astronomy Education, Heritage and Outreach from 2015 to 2018; and a Vice-President of the IAU on the Executive Committee from 2018 to 2021. He has authored seven books on astronomy, most of them on the history of astrophysics in the last 20 years, but also his most recent book (the New Zealand Dark Sky Handbook) is about protecting dark skies and combatting light pollution in Aotearoa New Zealand. Catherine Y. Hohenkerk started working at the Royal Greenwich Observatory straight from school in 1971. She obtained an HNC in Mathematics, Statistics, and Computing, followed by a B.Sc. (Hons.) in mathematics, both by day release. She worked in the Solar and Computer Departments before being transferred to HM Almanac Office in 1978, where she remained, despite the closure of the Observatory and the relocation to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in 1998, and then to the UK Hydrographic Office in 2006, until retirement at the end of January 2017. During her career, she has been involved with the content, programming, and production of all the almanacs. In 2005, she received the US Naval Observatory Superintendent’s Award.

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Catherine was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation and of the Royal Astronomical Society. She is a member of the International Astronomical Union, its Division A, Fundamental Astronomy, and has been President of Commissions 4, Ephemerides (2012–2015), and A3 Fundamental Standards (2015–2018), and is Chair of the standing Working Group Standard of Fundamental Astronomy (SOFA), which provides software that support IAU Resolutions. She collaborated with Richard Stephenson and Leslie Morrison on the paper ‘Measurement of the Earth’s rotation: 720  BC to AD 2015,’ published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 2016. Recently she and Ken Seidelmann edited a book titled The History of Celestial Navigation: Rise of the Royal Observatory and Nautical Almanacs, to be published by Springer in their Historical and Cultural Astronomy Series. Kenneth I. Kellermann is an Emeritus Senior Scientist at the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia. His research has been primarily devoted to extragalactic radio sources, especially their radio spectra, time variability, and small scale structure, with short excursions ranging from planetary radio astronomy to cosmology and SETI. After receiving his Ph.D. from Caltech, he spent 2 years in Australia before joining NRAO in 1965, where he remained for the next 55  years, with short sabbatical interludes at Caltech and CSIRO, as well as a 2  year stint as a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Science, the American Philosophical Society, and a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is a recipient of the 1971 Helen B. Warner Prize, 1973 Rumford Medal, and the 2014 Catherine Bruce Gold Medal. Kellermann was a member of the two NASA SETI Science Workshops as well as the later SETI Institute SETI 2020 studies. He has organized and participated in a number of SETI conferences, including the 1971 Byurakan CETI conference.

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Roger  Kinns was born in Winchester, England, in 1944. He read mechanical sciences as an undergraduate at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and then took an M.ASc. degree in control engineering at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, before returning to Cambridge to complete a Ph.D. on unsteady aerodynamics. Roger was Maudslay Research Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, from 1971 to 1975. He then joined YARD Ltd in Glasgow, Scotland, to lead development and application of techniques for the acoustic design of ships and submarines. He has worked as an independent consultant since 1999. Until 2019, he was a Senior Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He has helped to supervise research students in acoustics at the Universities of Cambridge, Newcastle and New South Wales and has published widely in journals ranging from the Journal of Sound and Vibration to the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage. The Maudslay connection led to an enduring fascination with the history of engineering and particularly time signals worldwide. Presently, Roger is Treasurer of the Maudslay Society and Maudslay Scholarship Foundation, and Chairman of the Younger (Benmore) Trust that has supported development of Benmore Botanic Garden since 1928. He is also a member of the Newcomen Society, the Society for the History of Astronomy, the Royal Northern and Clyde Yacht Club, the Tasmanian Philatelic Society, and the Incorporation of Gardeners of Glasgow, having been Deacon in 2009–2010. He is co-owner of Thalia, a racing keelboat built in 1924. It shares its name with the RN frigate which Wauchope commanded in the 1830s. Roger has lived in Clynder, near Helensburgh, Scotland, since 1975. Trevor  M.  Leaman is a Cultural Astronomy Ph.D. researcher in the School of Humanities and Languages, University of New South Wales (UNSW). He is researching the astronomical traditions of the Wiradjuri people of central NSW under the supervision of Associate Professor Duane Hamacher (UMelb) and Professor Daniel Robinson (UNSW). He earned diplomas in civil and mechanical engineering, degrees in biology and forest ecology, and an M.Sc. in astronomy.

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Trevor has published papers in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage and Mediterranean Archaeology & Archaeometry, and a chapter in the book The Harmony Debates (Sophia Centre Press, University of Wales, 2020) titled ‘Harmonising the Land and Sky in Aboriginal Dreamings.’ He has worked as an astronomy guide and educator at Ayres Rock Resort, the Launceston Planetarium, and Sydney Observatory. He also tutors the unit PHYS1160 Introduction to Astronomy and Search for Life Elsewhere at UNSW, and runs his own Astronomy Outreach business Dark Skies Downunder where he presents the cultural night sky to clubs, schools, communities, and private functions. He has also co-written Indigenous Astronomy units for the Australian National Curriculum. J ames Lequeux, born in 1934, started radio astronomy in 1954 as a graduate student and obtained a Ph.D. in 1962 on the structure of continuum radio sources measured by interferometry. He worked on the construction of the radio telescope in Nançay and in 1966 founded the first French infrared astronomy group at Meudon. He spent a year at Caltech observing at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory and was deeply involved in the genesis of the IRAM project. As an astronomer at the Paris Observatory, he specialized in interstellar matter and the evolution of galaxies. He has been Director of the Nançay Radio Astronomy Station and of the Marseilles Observatory. For 15 years, he was one of the two Editors-in-Chief of the European journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. At his retirement in 1999, he started a second career in the history of science. He has published several textbooks and many books on the history of physics and astronomy and has written numerous papers for the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage (JAHH). Currently, he is an Associate Editor of this journal. Nick Lomb obtained a Ph.D. from Sydney University for a thesis titled A Detailed Study of Alpha Virginis and Three Other Broad-lined Beta Canis Majoris Stars. During his thesis work, Nick developed the theory of least squares frequency analysis, which has now become a standard method of numerical analysis, called the Lomb–Scargle Periodogram. According to Google Scholar, his relevant publication in the journal Astrophysics and Space Science has received over 5000 citations.

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On joining the staff of Sydney Observatory, he initially concentrated on the determination of precise positions of minor planets. Subsequently, he had a close involvement in the preparation and publication of the Sydney Southern Star Catalogue. After Sydney Observatory came under the auspices of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, now better known as the Powerhouse Museum, Nick was appointed Curator of Astronomy. As curator, he planned exhibitions such as Return of the Comet, Hands on Astronomy, By the light of the southern stars, Mars: the closest encounter, Transit of Venus: the scientific event that led Captain Cook to Australia, Observing the weather and From Earth to the Universe. He was also involved in outreach by providing astronomical information for the public and making regular appearances in the media. As well, he organized an adult education class at Sydney Observatory for close to 25 years. Having left the Observatory, Nick continues to prepare the annual Australasian Sky Guide that is published by Powerhouse Publishing, as he has done since 1991. Now an Adjunct Professor at the University of Southern Queensland, he researches the history of Australian astronomy. He has authored two books on the transit of Venus and in recent years has published research papers on the history of the Astronomical Society of Australia and on eclipses of the Sun and eclipse expeditions. Leslie V. Morrison spent his whole astronomical career at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, 1960–1998. He graduated from Aberdeen and Sussex Universities, principally in mathematics and astronomy, respectively. He also received a D.Sc. from Aberdeen University in 1994. He was elected FRAS in 1968. He worked in the fields of astrometry and the Earth’s rotation. In astrometry he was responsible for the UK collaboration with Denmark and Spain in operating the Carlsberg Automatic Meridian Circle at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica on La Palma in Las Islas Canarias. The precise measurements of the outer planets were used by JPL in preparing for the NASA space missions. The measurements of star positions and magnitudes contributed to the Input Catalogue for ESA’s astrometric satellite, Hipparcos.

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In the field of Earth’s rotation, he analyzed timings of lunar occultations in the period AD 1600–1955  in order to derive decade fluctuations in the Earth’s rate of rotation. In 1975, he derived an accurate value for the tidal acceleration of the Moon, which was later corroborated by Lunar Laser Ranging to the corner-cube reflectors on the Moon. This value for the tidal acceleration of the Moon was adopted in his long collaboration with F.  Richard Stephenson in the analyses of historical records of pre-telescopic solar and lunar eclipses. This led to a series of papers on the historical fluctuations on decade and centennial time-­scales in the Earth’s rate of rotation. Notable among these is the series of three papers in 1984, 1995, and 2016 (with Catherine Hohenkerk) in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. He continues to work in this field. Jay M. Pasachoff served as Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College. A great passion of his was for solar eclipses, and he traveled across the globe studying 74 of them, likely observing more eclipses than ever did anyone else. Jay was chair of the IAU Working Group on Eclipses. His solar work included studies of the solar chromosphere, backed by NASA grants, using NASA spacecraft and the 1-m Swedish Solar Telescope on La Palma. He was President of the IAU’s Commission on Education and Development, which is now Commission C1 on Astronomy Education and Development. Jay served on the Organizing Committee for IAU Commission C.C3 on the History of Astronomy as well as the Johannes Kepler Working Group. He was chair of the Historical Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society and also chaired the Astronomy Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He served on the astronomy committees of the American Astronomical Society, the American Physical Society, and the American Association of Physics Teachers. He was a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the International Planetarium Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Royal Astronomical Society. He was elected a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society in 2020.

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Pasachoff wrote college-level astronomy textbook, Peterson Field Guide to the Stars and Planets, and coauthored Peterson Field Guide to Weather. He additionally authored or coauthored textbooks in calculus and physics. Pasachoff received the 2003 Education Prize of the American Astronomical Society. He received the 2017 Richtmyer Memorial Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers and the 2019 KlumpkeRoberts Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Two asteroids were named for Jay and his wife, Naomi: 5100 Pasachoff and 68109 Naomipasachoff. F. Richard Stephenson was born in England in 1941, and has a B.Sc. (Honors) degree from the University of Durham, and M.Sc., Ph.D., and D.Sc. degrees from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He is currently an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Durham and has held Adjunct Professorships in the Centre for Astronomy at James Cook University, Townsville, and the Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland, both in Australia. Upon his retirement from Durham University, he was awarded a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship in order to continue his research. A former President of IAU Commission 41 (History of Astronomy), Richard is on the Editorial Boards of both the Journal for the History of Astronomy and the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage. He is widely recognized as the founder of the specialist field of Applied Historical Astronomy, and uses ancient records from Babylon, China, Japan, Korea, the Arabic world, and Europe to investigate historical variations in the Earth’s rotation, historical supernovae, the past orbit of Halley’s Comet, solar variability, and historical aurorae. He has also carried out considerable research on ancient Asian astronomical manuscripts and star maps. For his work in historical astronomy, he was awarded the Jackson–Gwilt Medal by the Royal Astronomical Society and the Tompion Gold Medal by the Worshipful Company of Clock-makers (London), and minor planet 10979 has been named Fristephenson.

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Richard has more than 220 publications, including the following books: Atlas of Historical Eclipse Maps: East Asia, 1500 BC – AD 1900 (1986, co-authored by M.A.  Houlden), Secular Solar and Geomagnetic Variations over the Last 10,000 Years (1988, co-authored by Arnold Wolfendale), Oriental Astronomy from Guo Shoujing to King Sejong (1997, co-edited by Nha Il-Seong); Historical Eclipses and Earth’s Rotation (1997), Historical Supernovae and Their Remnants (2002, co-authored by David Green); Astronomical Instruments and Archives from the Asia-Pacific Region (2004, co-edited by Wayne Orchiston, Nha Il-Seong and Suzanne Débarbat); and The History of World Calendars and Calendar-Making. Proceedings of the International Conference in Commemoration of the 600th Anniversary of the Birth of Kim Dam (2017, co-edited by Nha Il-Seong and Wayne Orchiston). In 2015, Springer published the 380-page book: New Insights from Recent Studies in Historical Astronomy: Following in the Footsteps of F. Richard Stephenson. A Meeting to Honor F. Richard Stephenson on his 70th Birthday (edited by Wayne Orchiston, David Green and Richard Strom).  eter Robertson is an honorary research fellow in the P School of Physics, University of Melbourne. He spent most of his career as Managing Editor of the Australian Journal of Physics, published by CSIRO Australia and the Australian Academy of Science. His first contribution to the history of astronomy was the book Beyond Southern Skies  – Radio Astronomy and the Parkes Telescope (Cambridge University Press, 1992). Since his retirement, Peter has had more time to pursue his interest in the history of astronomy. His recent publications include the biography Radio Astronomer – John Bolton and a New Window on the Universe (NewSouth Publishing, 2017) and Golden Years of Australian Radio Astronomy: An Illustrated History with co-authors Wayne Orchiston and Woody Sullivan (Springer, 2021). Peter is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Astronomical History & Heritage and recently became a member of the IAU Working Group on Historic Radio Astronomy.

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Glen Rowe became interested in astronomy as a teenager in the late 1960s and developed an interest in observing variable stars and lunar occultations as well as astrophotography. These interests were encouraged at the Auckland Astronomical Society, which Glen joined in 1970 – a membership that continues today. In the early 1980s, Glen joined the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand (RASNZ) and shortly thereafter became Executive Secretary, a position he held for 7 years. During this time, he also served on the Royal Society of New Zealand’s National Committee for Astronomy (as a member, then secretary), and as RASNZ’s representative on the Carter Observatory Board, being Deputy Chair for a period. Glen returned to the RASNZ Council as Vice-President in 2009, followed by a term as President and 8 years as a Councillor. His service also included Chair of RASNZ’s Lecture Trust, and Standing Conference Committee. Glen was elected as a Fellow of the RASNZ in 2020. Glen chose land surveying as his vocation and graduated from Otago University with a Diploma in Land Surveying in 1975 and subsequently qualified as Registered Surveyor in 1978. It was not long before Glen was selected to participate in a geodetic astronomy program – observing stars with a high-order theodolite and millisecond timing to determine latitude and longitude to geodetic specifications. This would prove to be not the only time Glen’s interest in astronomy would merge with his professional activities. Over the following years, Glen specialized in geodesy and was involved in the introduction of the newly developing Global Positioning System technology into New Zealand’s survey system. As a member of Survey and Spatial New Zealand Tātai Whenua (formerly the New Zealand Institute of Surveyors), Glen has been the recipient of a Bogle Award (1982) and a Fulton Gold Medallion Class A.2 (2003). His career took a new direction at the end of 2004 when he started analyzing sea-level data and being responsible for producing New Zealand’s official tide predictions. Glen’s understanding of astronomy, in particular the orbital motions of the Earth–Moon–Sun system, has helped him understand how the variations in gravitational forces influence the rise and fall of the tide.

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Jefferson  Sauter was born in 1974  in Albany, NY, USA. He holds degrees from the American University, Catholic University of America, and James Cook University. In 2019, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern Queensland. Professionally, Jefferson comes to the history of astronomy from a quantitative background in mathematics and actuarial science and currently works in the pension industry. He is a member of the American Astronomical Society and volunteers at the Library of Congress. Sara J. Schechner is the David P. Wheatland Curator of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments and a Lecturer on History of Science at Harvard University. She oversees a collection of 25,000 early scientific instruments and engages with students, faculty, and the public not only through courses and museum exhibitions, but also hands-on workshops and performances. Schechner earned degrees in physics and the history and philosophy of science from Harvard and Cambridge. Before returning to Harvard, Schechner was chief curator at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, and curated exhibits for the Smithsonian Institution, the American Astronomical Society (AAS), and the American Physical Society. She has numerous publications to her credit, including Comets, Popular Culture, and the Birth of Modern Cosmology (1997), Tangible Things: Making History Through Objects (2015, with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich et  al.), Time of Our Lives: Sundials of the Adler Planetarium (2019), and other books. Her research, teaching, and exhibitions have earned her many prestigious international awards, including recognition as a Legacy Fellow of the AAS, the LeRoy E. Doggett Prize for Historical Astronomy of the AAS, the Sawyer Dialing Prize of the North American Sundial Society, the Paul Bunge Prize of the German Chemical Society and the German Bunsen Society for Physical Chemistry, the Joseph H. Hazen Education Prize of the History of Science Society, and the Great Exhibitions Award of the British Society for the History of Science. Schechner is currently the President of the Inter-Union Commission for History of Astronomy of the International

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Astronomical Union (IAU) and the International Union for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IUHPST), and the Vice-President of IAU Commission C3 for History of Astronomy. She has served as the Secretary of the Scientific Instrument Commission of the IUHPST and the Chair of the Historical Astronomy Division of the AAS. She is a founding member of the AAS Working Group for the Preservation of Astronomical Heritage. She has also served on advisory boards for the Center for History of Science of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the American Institute of Physics, and other organizations. William Sheehan is a retired psychiatrist and historian of astronomy, based in Flagstaff, Arizona, USA, and a frequent contributor to the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage. He has published over 20 books on astronomy including: Planets and Perception (1988), Worlds in the Sky (1992), The Immortal Fire Within: The Life and Times of Edward Emerson Barnard (1995), The Planet Mars (1996), In Search of Planet Vulcan (with Richard Baum, 1997), Epic Moon (with Thomas A.  Dobbins, 2001), Transits of Venus (with John E.  Westfall, 2004), Galactic Encounters (with Christopher Conselice, 2015), Celestial Shadows (with John E. Westfall, 2015), Discovering Pluto (with Dale P. Cruikshank, 2018), Jupiter (with Thomas A. Hockey, 2018), Mercury (2018), Saturn (2019), Neptune: From Grand Discovery to a World Revealed (with Robert W.  Smith, 2021), Discovering Mars (with Jim Bell, 2021), and Venus (with Sanjay Limaye, 2022). He was a 2001 fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and a recipient of the Gold Medal of the Oriental Astronomical Association. The IAU has named asteroid 16037 after him. Wolfgang  Steinicke started his astronomical career with visual deep-sky observations, made with telescopes up to 51-cm aperture. To understand the theoretical background, he studied physics and mathematics in Germany, later specializing in Astrophysics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics. His astronomical interest later focused on Dreyer’s New General Catalogue (NGC), which is largely based on observations by William and John Herschel. Research on nonstellar objects, their data, and historical sources has led

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to extensive catalogues, including a revision of the NGC and its supplements. In 2008, he obtained a doctorate from Hamburg University with a dissertation on nineteenth century deep-sky observations, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2010 as Observing and Cataloguing Nebulae and Star Clusters: From Herschel to Dreyer’s New General Catalogue. Steinicke is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, Director of the History of Astronomy Section of the German Vereinigung der Sternfreunde (Association of Amateur Astronomers), committee member of the British Webb Deep-Sky Society, member of the Herschel Society, Bath, and works for international associations. He frequently organizes astronomy meetings and gives lectures all over the world. Steinicke is the author of 11 books (in German and English) and has published more than 300 scientific papers. Christiaan Sterken obtained an M.Sc. degree in mathematics from the University of Ghent (Belgium), a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Brussels, and his Habilitation degree from the University of Liège. He is Emeritus Research Director at the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research, and Emeritus Guest Professor at the University of Brussels. His principal field of research is the photometry of variable stars (luminous blue variables, massive binaries, pulsating main sequence stars, and cataclysmic variables) and comets. He also taught courses in observational astronomy, and on the history of natural sciences at the Universities of Brussels and Ghent. He was the 2006– 2007 Chair holder of the Sarton Chair of History of Sciences (University of Ghent) and currently is President of Commission C3 (History of Astronomy) of the International Astronomical Union. Woodruff T. Sullivan III taught on the faculty of the University of Washington in Seattle for over 40  years and is now Professor (Emeritus) of Astronomy and History of Science (Adjunct). His interests are in astrobiology (in particular the search for extraterrestrial intelligence), radio astronomical studies of galaxies, and the history of astronomy. Together with John Baross, he produced the graduate textbook Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology (2007). History of astronomy research has been mainly on the

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twentieth century, in particular the development of early radio astronomy (Cosmic Noise: A History of Early Radio Astronomy, 2009) and ideas about extraterrestrial life. He is a Fellow of the American Astronomical Society and in 2012 received the Leroy Doggett Prize from its Historical Astronomy Division for his career contributions to the history of astronomy. Sundials are a passion. He has designed many sundials in the Seattle region, further afield in the USA, on the Martian rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and tattooed on his wrist. His contribution to the present book is part of a long-term project to write a biography of the great eighteenth-­ century astronomer William Herschel. He is currently writing the first volume of same with musicologist Sarah Waltz, covering Herschel’s life through 1782. William  Tobin was born in Manchester on July 28, 1953. He had dual New Zealand and British citizenship, and also European citizenship as he liked to add that he was sorry about ‘Brexit.’ After studying physics and astronomy in Cambridge (UK) and then at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, he obtained his Ph.D. in 1979. He specialized in observational astronomy, in particular stellar photometry, while teaching at various levels. After a post-doctoral stay at the Observatory of the University of St Andrews in Scotland, in 1982, he joined the Laboratoire d’Astronomie Spatiale in Marseilles, where he worked until 1987, mainly on B stars of the Galactic halo and variable stars of the Magellanic Clouds. From 1987, he was on the academic staff of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, where he directed a dozen theses and introduced CCD detectors at the Mount John University Observatory. William also had a great interest in the history of physics and astronomy, and in particular in Léon Foucault. In 2003, he published The Life and Science of Léon Foucault with Cambridge University Press. He played a very important role in arranging the beautiful collection on Foucault of the Musée des Arts et Métiers/ CNAM, in particular the balls of his pendulums, and also the collection of the Paris Observatory. He has also written numerous articles on the history of astronomy at various levels, always remarkable for their interest and accuracy, and often with a very British sense of humor.

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Some recent ones, published in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, concern an early drawing of M51 (2008), the Foucault–Secretan reflecting telescope (2016), transits of Venus (2013, 2021), and an obsolete lunar feature popularized by Victor Hugo (2022). Virginia Trimble is a native Californian and graduate of Toluca Lake Grammar School, Joseph LeConte Junior High, Hollywood High School, UCLA (B.A. in physics and astronomy), and the Calfornia Institute of Technology (M.S., Ph.D. astronomy, 1968), with an honorary M.A. from Cambridge University (England) and an honorary doctorate from the University of Valencia (Spain). When she joined the physics faculty of the University of California, Irvine (after 1 year of teaching at Smith College and 2 years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy in Cambridge), she was the youngest member of the faculty in 1971, the only woman (for the first 15  years), and the only astronomer (also for about the first 15 years). She is now the oldest member of the faculty still on full active duty, and there are, among 55 members of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, about a dozen women, and a comparable number of astronomers. Virginia’s current research interests include the structure and evolution of stars, galaxies, and the Universe, and of the communities of scientists who study them. This last means history of physics and astronomy, and scientometics (roughly, quantitative study of how science is done and its sociology). Trimble belongs to at least a dozen professional organizations and has participated as a committee member or officer of many of them, generally reaching her level of incompetence at about the level of Vice-President. Uniquely, she is the only person to have served as President of two different Divisions of the International Astronomical Union (Galaxies and the Universe, and Division of Union-Wide Activities), and was elected in 2022 to membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (not to be confused with the other AAAS, American Association for the Advancement of Science, of which she is a fellow).

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Harry  Wendt is an Adjunct Research Fellow in the Astrophysics Group at the University of Southern Queensland. He has a long-standing interest in early Australian radio astronomy and in 2009 completed a Ph.D. thesis on ‘The Contribution of the CSIRO Division of Radiophysics Potts Hill and Murraybank Field Stations to International Radio Astronomy’ through James Cook University (Townsville, Australia), supervised by Professor Wayne Orchiston and the late Professor Bruce Slee. Harry has since published a series of papers based upon his thesis and subsequent research, and the book Four Pillars of Radio Astronomy: Mills, Christiansen, Wild, Bracewell (2017, Springer, coauthored by Bob Frater and Miller Goss). In addition, Harry is a member of the IAU Working Group on Historic Radio Astronomy. He retired from full time work in 2017 after a 28-year career in banking, including time as Chief Technology Officer and General Manager of Digital for Westpac Banking Corporation in Australia. Prior to this, he worked in the computer industry and spent 8 years as an aircrew officer in the Royal Australian Navy Fleet Air Arm. It was while learning to navigate using a sextant that his interest in astronomy was first kindled. Richard Wielebinski was born in Pleszew, Poland, in 1936. The family was evicted from their home in 1939 and spent 10 years as refugees in Poland, Ukraine, and Germany. Finally the Wielebinski family immigrated to Australia in 1949. Richard at the age of 14  years, without previous schooling, had to learn English first. After obtaining the matriculation certificate in 1954 from the Hobart High School, Richard studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Tasmania. During his studies, he worked for Grote Reber who came to Tasmania to build a square kilometer array for low radio frequencies. Richard won a postgraduate fellowship which led to the suggestion (thanks to Grote Reber) that he should study for a Ph.D. under Prof. Sir Martin Ryle in Cambridge. This led to a ‘technical’ (engineering) topic: the study of radio polarization; the detection of Galactic magnetic fields. After completion of his Ph.D. in 1963, Richard moved to the Electrical Engineering Department at the Univeristy of Sydney. He was teaching and became

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involved in radio continuum surveys at the Parkes radio telescope. He was involved in early pulsar observations at Parkes, and also early pulsar searches with the Molonglo Mills Cross. In 1966, Richard was invited by Professor Hachenberg to a Guest Professorship at Bonn University. From this contact came involvement in the 100-m radio telescope project in Effelsberg. He was invited in 1969 to come to the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie in Bonn as a Director responsible for the Electronics Division. In the following 35  years, Richard was responsible for the 100-m dish and built up a research group involved in studies of Cosmic Magnetic Fields and Pulsars. In 2017, Richard was awarded the Karl-Schwarzschild Medal by the Astronomische Gesellschaft. He is a Professor at several institutions, also at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Richard became a Dr.h.c. of four universities, and is a member of several academies. He is still active in the IAU Historical Astronomy Working Group. Han  Yanben was admitted to the Astronomy Department of Beijing Normal University in 1965 and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1970. After working in the astronomy department, in 1972, he joined the Beijing Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (the predecessor of the current National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences). He is a Research Professor of the observatory. The main areas of work are in the astrometry department, mainly engaged in the observation and research of the Earth’s rotation variation and polar motion; investigation and study of the records of solar and lunar eclipses in ancient China; and to use these records to study the long-term variation of the Earth’s rotation over the past two or three thousand years. He has also carried out research into the intersection of astronomy and Earth science, astronomy and natural disasters, and the relationship between the Sun and Earth. He was on the Editorial Board of Progress in Geophysics. He has been a member of the Standing Council of the Beijing Astronomical Society, the Council of the Chinese Astronomical Society, the Chinese Geophysical Society, the Chinese Seismological Society, and the International Astronomical Union.

Part I

Astronomy and Society

Chapter 1

Cosmos and Culture: Linking the Heavens and the Earth Steven J. Dick

1 Introduction I do not exactly recall my first encounter with Wayne Orchiston, but it well preceded his founding, with John Perdrix, of the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage (JAHH), as discussed at the International Astronomical Union General Assembly in Kyoto, Japan in 1997 and inaugurated in June of the following year. I was pleased to be an inaugural member of the Editorial Board of that journal and to have a place of honor as the author of the first paper in volume 1, number 1 (Dick, 1998) on the Leonid meteors. That issue was shared with Jay Pasachoff, Mary Brück, Ruth Freitag, and Wayne himself, an auspicious start indeed (see p. vi in this volume). Over the next few years, including visits to my office at the US Naval Observatory in Washington, DC, Wayne and I worked together on the IAU’s Transit of Venus Working Group (Orchiston et al., 2004) and collaborated on two papers on the transits of Venus, one in the well-established Journal for the History of Astronomy (JHA) and the other in the new JAHH, in advance of the upcoming transits in 2004 and 2012 (Dick et al., 1998; Orchiston et al., 2000; Dick, 2004). Well known as the JHA was, there was an obvious place for a broader range of papers in the discipline, as the last 25 years have amply demonstrated. The tremendous amount of knowledge represented in those issues has immeasurably advanced the history of astronomy as a discipline, and those volumes stand as a monument to Wayne’s scholarship and persistence, as well as that of his team over the years. In this essay I want to examine astronomy’s role for humanity, broadly conceived. This is an immense task, and one steeped in deep history. As New York Times bestselling author Jo Marchant has recently argued in her book The Human Cosmos: S. J. Dick (*) Former NASA Chief Historian, NASA History Office, Washington, DC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Gullberg, P. Robertson (eds.), Essays on Astronomical History and Heritage, Historical & Cultural Astronomy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29493-8_1

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Civilization and the Stars, “the patterns people see in the sky have always governed how they live on Earth, shaping ideas about time and place; power and truth; life and death” (Marchant, 2020: xii). She proceeds to document this thesis in convincing fashion, ranging from the depiction of the Pleiades in the Lascaux cave paintings 20,000 years ago to astrobiology and space exploration today. Although I cannot be exhaustive on such a large subject (see e.g. Penprase, 2011 for a textbook overview), I highlight some of the areas in which both Wayne and I have been active and that he has encouraged through the JAHH and his many publications. These include the influence of cosmological worldviews over time; the practicalities of time, its dissemination, and role in navigation; the place of national observatories in society; transits of Venus as a technique for measuring the universe; the role of culture in discovery and classification; and philosophy of astronomy. The latter includes the effect of culture on astronomy as well as the reverse. I conclude by calling for a coherent discipline of philosophy of astronomy and a synergistic relationship between the history and philosophy of astronomy, including the relations between cosmos and culture.

2 Cultural Astronomy and World Heritage One of the more evocative ideas for a new history of astronomy journal in the late 1990s was the addition of the concept of heritage. That astronomical heritage stretches back to Stonehenge and beyond. Studies of these ancient astronomical sites fall under what has traditionally been called archaeoastronomy, but the term ‘cultural astronomy’ now conveys both a broader area of study and highlights the fact that one of the guiding principles of archaeoastronomy today is to place its work in cultural context. And what an encompassing cultural context it is. A recent festschrift for Clive Ruggles, one of the leaders in the study of ancient cultural astronomy, covers case studies that range geographically from North America (the Hopi), South America (the Argentine Moqoit), and Mesoamerica to Greece and the broader Mediterranean, ancient Iraq, Ireland, and the Australian aborigines (Boutsikas et al., 2021). In short cultural astronomy has extended way beyond the Stonehenge megaliths with which it is most often associated. We have learned that we must be very careful not to impose modern concepts such as “equinox” on cultures of the past, even as we recognize their strong relationships with the heavens. Today cultural astronomy is approached from many angles, including archaeological, textual, and ethnographic, even though melding these approaches is often fraught. Research on ancient cultural astronomy is now so vast as to defy comprehensive description. Older volumes such as Ed Krupp’s Echoes of the Ancient Skies (Krupp, 1983) and Anthony Aveni’s Skywatchers (Aveni, 2001) remain useful. More recent volumes include Ruggles’ own Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethno-­ astronomy (Ruggles, 2015), Giulio Magli’s interesting if occasionally provocative and irreverent Mysteries and Discoveries of Archaeoastronomy (Magli, 2009), and his more staid and systematic Archaeoastronomy: Introduction to the Science of

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Stars and Stones (Magli, 2020). All these volumes and many more will lead readers to the vast specialized literature, all of which demonstrates the theme of culture and cosmos from ancient times. International organizations now play an important role in fostering study of this subject, most notably the International Astronomical Union’s Working Group for Astronomy in Culture (WGAC), part of its C4 Commission on World Heritage and Astronomy (Gullberg et  al., 2021), working closely with UNESCO and the International Council on Monuments and Sites. The work of these groups (Ruggles & Cotte, 2011, 2017) has resulted in many astronomical sites being added to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites (UNESCO, World Heritage web site). Among those sites added in 2021, for example, is the Chankillo pre-Classic (250–200 BC) archaeological astronomical complex, a solar observatory complex on the north-central coast of Peru. Although the site was apparently active for only 50 years, its analysis is a prime example of how the field has advanced, tying astronomical work to the culture that produced it. Wolfschmidt (2021) provides an excellent overview of the architectural heritage of observatories, and strategies for adding them to the World Heritage List in the future. Over the past decades a tremendous amount of meticulous work has gone into the analysis of many sites, megalithic and otherwise. The investigations are now much more systematic by comparison with earlier work, and megalithic archaeology and refined “alignment hunting” is now only one part of cultural astronomy. In the past claims about methods, alignments, and overly-broad conclusions out of cultural context could be justifiably criticized. As cultural astronomy has advanced, it is still open to scholarly criticism and vigorous discussion, but at a much higher level. Nor is astronomical heritage limited to ancient culture. The more recent heritage is becoming recognized around the world, if sporadically. Many recent American sites, for example, have received US National Historic Landmark designations, with all the protections that implies (Butowsky, 1989). Short of that, around the world plaques mark the spot of significant astronomical events such as transit of Venus expeditions (Cottam et  al., 2012; Orchiston et  al., 2004), as we shall see below. All these activities are testimony to the ancient and ongoing connection of cosmos and culture.

3 Worldviews: From the Physical to the Biological Universe Throughout history astronomy has provided worldviews that form the very basis of cultures. Following the first creation myths, successive cosmological worldviews have been held in Western civilization, ranging from the ancient atomists with their infinite number of worlds, to the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic cosmology with the Earth at its center, and the Copernican heliocentric worldview that made the Earth a planet and the planets potential Earths. The short-lived Cartesian system with its swirling vortices first gave credence to solar systems beyond our own, and the Newtonian universe ruled by gravitational law often imagined other solar systems like ours

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Fig. 1.1  Three Worldviews: The geocentric Ptolemaic (top), heliocentric Copernican (left), and the ‘new system’ according to William Derham, Astro-Theology (1715). The new system as depicted at right indicates Derham’s belief in a plurality of solar systems, a worldview that has now been empirically confirmed and lends credence to the idea of a biological universe

(Fig. 1.1). These cosmologies have risen and fallen with new discoveries or, in the case of the Newtonian universe, have been subsumed and fundamentally altered in the worldview of Einstein’s space–time and general relativity. Each culture, from the ancient Egyptian and Chinese to Native Americans and medieval Europeans, has had its own history of worldviews, and these were central to their cultural and spiritual worldviews at the time (Aveni, 1989, 1997; McCluskey, 1998; Pankenier, 2013; Williamson, 1984). Today our worldviews have converged to one that places us in the far precincts of the Milky Way Galaxy in the midst of billions of galaxies. And in terms of time we see ourselves in the context of 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution (Dick, 2009; Dick & Lupisella, 2009). Whether we realize it or not, these cosmological worldviews have historically played a major role in our everyday thinking and continue to do so. Dante’s Divine Comedy, with its moral lessons played out in an Aristotelian worldview of nested spheres with the Earth at the center and the sphere of fixed stars at the periphery, provided the backdrop for medieval life. Within this ordered framework, both a mental and moral model as well as a physical system, all human actions took place. “In every age the human mind is deeply influenced by the accepted model of the universe,” C.S. Lewis reminded us in his book on medieval and Renaissance history  (Lewis, 1964: 222). The model, he insisted, “is also influenced by the

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prevailing temper of mind.” As historian of science Nasser Zakariya has demonstrated in detail in his book A Final Story: Science, Myth, and Beginnings, the same is true in the modern world, where the sweeping scientific epic of cosmic evolution embraces the cosmological, the biological and the social, and provides the background for modern life (Zakariya, 2017). As in the past our worldview still has a spiritual component, providing the basis for cosmic religions, astrotheology, and cosmotheology (Dick, 2000, 2018b; Peters, 2018). Seen in another way, most cosmologies throughout history have been cultural conceptions of the physical universe—a cosmos of planets, stars and eventually galaxies. But gradually since the seventeenth century, when the Copernican worldview became widespread and made the Earth a planet and the planets potential Earths, a new type of cosmology today dubbed ‘the biological universe’ has garnered increasing attention (Dick, 1996, 2005). This idea of a universe full of life now pervades Western society. The sciences of astrobiology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) have yet to confirm this new worldview, even as popular culture tries to work out the implications through the UFO debate and alien science fiction literature. As has recently been shown, ideas of a biological universe are not only a Western phenomenon, but also apply to Islamic society (Determann, 2021). Although life has not yet been found beyond Earth, the discovery that exoplanets circle virtually every star leads us to prepare for a transition in worldviews from the physical to the biological universe (Dick, 2018a). Philosophical, religious, and ethical worldviews are already in the process of transforming into astrophilosophy (Ćirković, 2012), astrotheology (Peters, 2018), and astroethics (Impey et al., 2013; Dick, 2018a). In short, with the knowledge of our place in the universe, we are increasingly living in what the German historian Alexander Geppert has called an ‘astroculture’ determined by our cosmological worldview (Geppert, 2012). Moreover, the development of cosmological worldviews is an ongoing process. In addition to research on the perhaps deep relationship between the constants of nature and life (Barrow & Tipler, 1986; Davies, 2007) it has been suggested that we may in fact live in a postbiological universe, in which artificial intelligence dominates over biological flesh and blood (Dick, 2003b). With the classical physical universe as backdrop, the biological and perhaps postbiological universe worldviews stand to affect cultural futures in ways still unknown.

4 Sky and Earth Joined: National Observatories, Time, and Navigation Aside from generating cosmological worldviews, astronomy plays a very practical role in society at many different levels. Cultures from the Babylonians and Greeks to the Inca and Maya have observed the heavens in order to regulate their calendars, determine times of planting and harvest, navigate the seas, and for a variety of other

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purposes (Aveni, 1989, 1997; Krupp, 1983, 1991; Penprase, 2011).Though this history stretches back to the beginnings of astronomy and can be approached from many angles, one way of illuminating the theme is by looking at the role of publicly-funded national observatories in society, and focusing on one of their main activities: the determination, maintenance, and dissemination of time for navigation and the general public. These themes are much too expansive for this essay, so after a general introduction to national observatories, I will focus on the US Naval Observatory (USNO), the oldest continuously operating scientific institution in the US Government, for which I have written an extensive history (Dick, 2003a). This should suffice to give the flavor of the kind of work these institutions have undertaken around the world, and continue to do so in order to serve societal needs. The long history of observing the heavens for practical purposes was institutionalized in a big way by many private and public observatories, but no more so than with the founding of national observatories (Dick & Hoskin, 1991). We may consider that national observatories began, after the important but abortive founding of Tycho Brahe’s observatory by Frederick II of Denmark in 1576, with the Paris Observatory (1667) and the Royal Observatory at Greenwich (1675). But the need for national observatories did not end in France and England. As Table 1.1 shows, Germany and Imperial Russia added two important examples in the early eighteenth century, the rate of new institutions actually increased in the nineteenth century, and new members have continued to be added in the twentieth century. It is clear that all national observatories are not listed in Table 1.1, particularly those of the Far East. A more comprehensive list would be an interesting and major task, but the sample given here is large enough to demonstrate several trends. It should also be clear that there are many other ‘astronomical centers of the world’ (Krisciunas, 1988) that may receive partial government funding but are not considered national observatories. We may distinguish three eras in the national observatory movement: the first era, in which the prototype Paris, Greenwich, Berlin, and St. Petersburg observatories were founded; the second era, characterized by offshoots from previous national observatories (Royal Observatory Cape), by new observatories of younger nations (US Naval Observatory), and by the rise of astrophysical observatories; and the third era, post-World War II, characterized by national or international consortia, large budgets relative to the previous eras, and the study of old and new wavelength regions with increasingly sophisticated telescopes, detectors and spacecraft. National observatories were the original “big science” of their time, but in this third era, which encompasses both the Computer Age and the Space Age, the movement has benefited from the general trend toward even bigger science seen in the national laboratories of many disciplines (Price, 1963; Weinberg, 1967). Aside from the striking association of all the early institutions with their national scientific societies (whether Academies of Science or the Royal Society), the common property that stands out in the first era is the largely practical nature of the work for which the first national observatories were founded. Whether for the improvement of navigation, geographic and geodetic work, or calendar reform, all these institutions were founded to meet a national need. In meeting these national needs,

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Table 1.1  Some important national observatories and their patrons. In the first and second eras, most were founded for practical purposes for societal needs 1st Era

2nd Era

3rd Era

Institution Uraniborg (Tycho Brahe) Paris Observatory Royal Observatory, Greenwich Berlin Observatory St. Petersburg Observatory Royal Observatory, Cape U.S. Naval Observatory Pulkovo Observatory Chilean National Observatory Argentine National Observatory Potsdam Astrophysical Smithsonian Astrophysical Dominion Observatory Dominion Astrophysical NRAO (U.S.) Kitt Peak NRAO (Australia) Cerro-Tololo Inter-American European Southern Observatory Anglo-Australian (Siding Spring) Space Telescope Science Institute

Foundeda 1576 (abortive) 1667 1675 1701 1725 1820 1830 1839 1852 1870 1874 1891 1903 1918 1956 1957 1959 1963 1964 1967 1981

Patron Frederick II Louis XIV Charles II Frederick I Peter the Great Britain U.S. Navy Nicholas I Chile Argentina German Acad. Science Smithsonian/ U.S. Canada Canada NSF/AUi NSF/AURA CSIRO NSF/AURA/Chile 5 countries (now 8) Britain/Australia NASA/AURA

Abbreviations: AUI Associated Universities, Inc., AURA Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, CSIRO Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NSF National Science Foundation, NRAO National Radio Astronomy Observatory From Dick (1990) a A number of criteria can be used for founding dates. The majority of dates here indicate when funding was assured

the precise determinations of celestial positions formed the backbone of much of their work; for example, the method of lunar distances for navigation required precise ephemerides of the Moon and precise positions of the stars as the reference frame, a task that was brought to fruition only with Maskelyne’s publication of the British Nautical Almanac in 1766 (Sadler, 1976). Byproducts of this practical work were the great star catalogues of Flamsteed and others, Bradley’s discovery of the aberration of light, the determination of proper motions, and many other results also of interest to pure astronomy. The early institutions of the second era were also founded for similar purposes, but now with the determination of longitude by chronometers as the most promising method of navigation at sea, and an important method for determining geographical positions as well (Dick, 2003a). With accuracies now on the order of tenths of arcseconds vs. about 15 arcseconds for Flamsteed (Chapman, 1983), greatly improved star catalogues were the byproducts of the Cape, US Naval, Pulkovo, Chilean, and

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Argentine observatories, whereas in this era of improved instruments stellar parallaxes were also at last possible. With the rise of the astrophysical national observatories at the end of the nineteenth century, results beyond any practical need were the goal, and the question of how far public money should support such research became increasingly important. The very existence of the third era gives an answer to that question, for the research of these observatories has gone beyond anything that the public would consider practical. The longevity of the older institutions, as well as the occasional addition of new ones, attests to a continuing national necessity, though one expanded to include the benefits of pure research, whether to national prestige or the advancement of astronomy. In terms of national necessity, the needs for accurate time and navigation have been cultural constants throughout the long history of astronomy for scientific, military, and public purposes (Bartky, 2000; Dick, 2003a; Howse, 1997; Schechner, 2014; Sobel & Andrewes, 1998; Stephens, 2002; Whitrow, 1988). “The appreciation of the value of correct time is a good index to the civilization of a nation,” wrote E.E. Hayden, the Director of Time Service at the US Naval Observatory in 1906 (Hayden, 1906). The astronomical determination of time, its dissemination, and timekeeping via ever-more accurate standard clocks is a vast subject, since the seventeenth century very much related to national observatories but also to many other institutions. The very concept of time and its uses have become more complex over the centuries, as Table 1.2 shows with its evolving varieties of time and their connections to astronomy. In the seventeenth century mean time was defined by the Earth’s rotation with reference to the stars. Mean solar time, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), Universal Time (UT and its variants), and Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) are all flavors of Earth rotation time. In the 1960s Ephemeris Time was defined based on the Earth’s orbital motion, and a variety of times was further defined on this basis for use in astronomical research. In the 1950s atomic time based on atomic clocks freed timekeeping from astronomy, but only to an extent. In order to keep in sync with the Earth’s rotation, the leap second was introduced. This is not the place to go into details of the uses of these varieties of time, but see Dick (2003a, Chap. 11), and for the early history of mean solar time Bianchi (2021). As Ian Bartky has shown in detail in his book Selling the True Time, beginning in the last half of the nineteenth century disseminating time became a widespread activity among observatories; an Appendix to his volume lists 22 American public time services emanating from observatories large and small during this time, an activity repeated around the world (Bartky, 2000: 211). From her perch as historian at the Smithsonian Institution responsible for the museum’s time collections, Carlene Stephens has also skillfully documented and illustrated the role of time in American culture (Stephens, 2002). And Sara Schechner, curator of the Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, has delightfully highlighted the role of time in culture in the context of the numerous artifacts in the Harvard collection and other institutions (Schechner, 2014). These are fundamental themes repeated again and again with cultural variations around the world.

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Table 1.2  Varieties of Time, all tied to the heavens Class Astronomical Time (Earth Rotation)

Type Mean Time (Mean Solar Time) Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)

Astronomical Time (Earth Orbital Motion)

Atomic Time

 Universal Time (UT)  UT0, UT1, UT2  Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) (within .1 sec of UT2)  Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) redefined with leap second; within .9 sec of UT1 Ephemeris Time  Terrestrial Dynamical Time (TDT)  Barycentric Dynamical Time (TDB)  Geocentric Coordinate Time (TCG)  Barycentric Coordinate Time (TCB)  Terrestrial Time (TT) AT (NPL) AM (NPL,NRL, NBS, CNET, etc) A.1 (USNO) Temps Atomique International (TAI)

Introduced Seventeenth century (Flamsteed) 1880 (Great Britain) 1916 (United Kingdom) 1918 (U.S. officially adopts Greenwich-linked meridians) 1928 (IAU) 1956 (IAU) 1960, Jan. 1 1972

1960 (CGPM) 1976 (IAU) 1976 (IAU) 1991 (IAU) 1991 (IAU) 1991 (IAU) 1955 (July) 1956- (BIH) 1958 1972 (CGPM) (available since 1955)

IAU International Astronomical Union, CGPM General Conference on Weights and Measures, NRL Naval Research Laboratory (USA), NPL National Physical Laboratory (UK), NBS National Bureau of Standards (USA), CNET Centre National d’Etudes des Telecommunications (France) From Dick (2003a: 487)

Aside from conceptual factors, the determination, maintenance, and dissemination of time is also the story of the evolution of technology. At the US Naval Observatory mean solar time was determined by transit telescopes until 1934 (Fig. 1.2), by more stable Photographic Zenith Tubes (PZTs) until the 1980s, and then by Very Long Baseline interferometry with radio telescopes. Time was maintained by standard clocks such as the classical Frodsham pendulum clock from the 1840s, then by Riefler clocks from 1900–1931 (Fig. 1.3), followed by Shortt clocks until 1945, quartz crystal clocks until 1966, and then increasingly accurate forms of atomic clocks until the present. The current Master clock, an ensemble of cesium and hydrogen maser atomic clocks, can keep time to 200 picoseconds per day (two-­ tenths of a billionth of a second per day). Table 1.3 shows the accuracies of these clocks as well as their dates of use at USNO and Greenwich. Similarly time

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Fig. 1.2  Time and civilization are inextricably linked. Shown here is the 5.3-inch transit telescope used for time determination at the U.S. Naval Observatory for several decades beginning in 1893. Every second or third night, depending on weather conditions, observations were made of ‘clock stars’ whose positions were well-known, so that corrections and rates of three standard clocks at the Observatory could be determined. Such observations for time were undertaken at observatories around the world. (Credit: US Naval Observatory)

dissemination evolved from time balls in the 1840s to the telegraph in the 1860s, to radio signals in the early twentieth century, followed by portable atomic clocks in the 1960s, and today’s Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. The US Naval Observatory is the sole source of time for the GPS satellites at the level of a few nanoseconds, allowing positioning to a few feet. And GPS is only one of several satellite navigation systems around the world, all relying on accurate time. Massive efforts have gone into developing each of these technologies worldwide in the service of societal needs, and much work has gone into the history of these efforts as well. The history of chronometers is now well known even in popular form, from the struggles of John Harrison (Sobel & Andrewes, 1998) to the critical

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Fig. 1.3  Riefler’s precision clock, one step in the evolution of standard clocks. Three such clocks were used at the U.S. Naval Observatory as the standard clock in the early twentieth century. The clock is enclosed in an air-tight glass case. From Sigmund Riefler, Präzisions-Pendeluhren und Zeitdienstanlagen für Sternwarten (Munich, Theodor Ackermann, 1907: 40)

role of chronometers in time of war (Fig. 1.4). The history of clocks has an entire literature of its own, and it is not too much to claim that increasingly accurate clocks have had revolutionary effects on society (Landes, 1983). Research on the use of time balls, a visual signal that ships in port used to rate their chronometers, has recently accelerated after initial efforts four decades ago uncovered a colorful history (Bartky, 1983; Bartky & Dick, 1981, 1982). Much of that research has appeared in JAHH (e.g. Bateman, 2013; Kinns, 2009, 2021a, b; Kinns et al., 2021). As an echo of those bygone years, and often without realizing the historical significance,

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Table 1.3  Accuracies of standard clocks at the US Naval Observatory and Greenwich Observatory, 1866–2020 Type Kessels Parkinson & Frodsham # 611 Howard # 404 Riefler Shortt Quartz Crystal/Shortt combined Quartz Crystal Essen Ring Atomic – cesium Master Clock (cesiums and hydrogen masers) Master Clock (cesium and hydrogen Masers)

Accuracy (seconds) .1 .1–.01

Date at Date Invented USNO 1842 1866 Nineteenth 1880 century

Date at Greenwich

.01 to .001 .001 .001

1889 1922 1928

1903 1931 1946

1921 1924 1942

.0001

1938

1955

?

.0000001 .000000001 (one nanosecond) .000000000020 (.2 nanoseconds = 200 picoseconds)

1955 –

1966 1990

1966 –

2020

Adapted from Dick (2003a: 462)

time ball drops remain quite popular, especially on New Year’s Eve in New York City. At Greenwich the ball is still dropped every day at 1 pm (Fig. 1.5) and the Lyttleton time ball at Christchurch, New Zealand was rebuilt after being mostly destroyed during the 6.3 earthquake of 2011. It reopened in 2018 to much fanfare. Navigation, which has evolved from celestial to radio to satellite navigation, has its own extensive history (May, 1973; Howse, 1997; Seidlemann & Hohenkerk, 2020), which now reaches even to space navigation (Butrica, 2014). In short, aspects of daily life that we now take for granted like accurate time, ship navigation, and the ubiquitous GPS tracking in our automobiles and digital devices, all have a connection to the heavens. This link between the heavens and the Earth is not always appreciated.

5 Measuring the Universe: Transits of Venus At first thought, the theme of measuring the universe (van Helden, 1985) might seem far removed from culture. But this is not so, since humans have been surrounded by the heavens and have contemplated its meaning from the earliest times. Part of that meaning is determining the size of objects visible from Earth, the size of the Solar System, and the size of the universe itself—all of which eventually fits into the worldviews described in the first section of this paper. In a crude sense humans have been measuring the universe at least since the days of Stonehenge when they followed the Sun’s movements along the horizon. In a more modern scientific sense

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Fig. 1.4  During World War II the Hamilton Watch Company undertook the mass production of marine chronometers for the first time. During the war Hamilton produced 8902 chronometers for the Navy, 1500 for the Maritime Commission for merchant navy ships, and 500 for the Army and Air Force. They were essential for the war effort. The rating sheet shows the chronometer passed a series of tests between February 28 and April 5, 1942, meeting specifications for a daily rate below 1.55 seconds per day. (Credit: US Naval Observatory)

during the 18th and 19th centuries the determination of the astronomical unit (AU)—the distance from the Earth to the Sun—held the key to measuring the rest of the universe and was therefore a kind of Holy Grail of astronomy for several centuries. One of the most exacting and yet colorful methods of determining this key unit were the transits of Venus across the face of the Sun (Fig.  1.6) a technique that launched numerous expeditions around the world. The history of these expeditions,

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Fig. 1.5  Time ball at Greenwich. Once an important part of disseminating time from the observatory to ships in port in order to ‘rate’ their chronometers, this ball is still dropped for ceremonial purposes at 1 pm daily. A time ball or other object, often linked to local culture, is ceremonially dropped on New Year’s Eve in New York’s Times Square and many other locations around the world. (Photo: Steven Dick)

which again involve national observatories in some cases, highlight the relation of culture and cosmos in many ways. Even in the twenty-first century, when Venus transits had long been superseded by better methods, it is difficult to overestimate the excitement generated as the 2004 and 2012 transits approached, both among the public and in the International Astronomical Union, which had a Transit of Venus Working Group (Orchiston et al., 2004). The 2004 issues of JAHH are replete with Transit of Venus papers.

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Fig. 1.6  Transit of Venus. An image from a photographic plate of Venus crossing the face of the Sun, one of only eleven plates surviving from the 1882 American expeditions. Measuring the position of Venus on the face of the Sun was one method for determining the astronomical unit, a basic unit for measuring the universe. Observing the very rare transits of Venus has also become a popular cultural phenomenon. (Credit: US Naval Observatory)

Much of the scientific and public interest in transits of Venus stems from their extreme rarity. At long intervals (occurring in pairs only twice every 120  years) Venus crosses the face of the Sun as seen from Earth, a phenomenon that can last for only a few hours. As the nineteenth-century transits of Venus approached, the phenomenon had been observed only three times in recorded history—1639, 1761, and 1769, and the desire to determine the so-called solar parallax, and thereby the scale of the Solar System, was at a fever pitch. At stake was reducing an uncertainty in the Earth-Sun distance by several million miles. Every difference of one hundredth of an arcsecond in the solar parallax, say from 8.79″ to 8.80″, translated into approximately 100,000 miles. The methods had been worked out in the eighteenth century by Edmond Halley, Joseph-Nicolas D’Isle, and others, and required observations from widely varying geographic locations. This inspired expeditions to remote locations around the world, including eight American expeditions in 1874 and eight more in 1882. Aside from their disputed scientific results, these transit of Venus expeditions are of historical interest for the international disagreements over techniques and instruments, as an early example of international cooperation and rivalry in astronomy, and for their place in two broader historical trends: the determination of the fundamental astronomical constants, and the great scientific voyages of the nineteenth century. A great deal was at stake, not only for science but also for national interests. This is why in 1874 alone the British would have 12 expeditions, the Russians 26,

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France and Germany six each, Italy three and Holland one. As the nineteenth-­ century historian Agnes Clerke put it, when in 1874 Venus passed in front of the face of the Sun, “every country which had a reputation to keep or to gain for scientific zeal was forward to cooperate in the great cosmopolitan enterprise of the transit” (Clerke, 1902). The United States was no exception; it had a growing reputation in science and was anxious to accelerate that growth. The nineteenth-century transit of Venus pair offered a unique opportunity for the country to showcase its rising scientific talent—one that would not come again until the distant twenty-first century in the year 2004. The 16 nineteenth-century American expeditions around the world are representative of the efforts expended and problems encountered in implementing this technique, which required meticulous visual and photographic measurements of the contacts of Venus with the Sun and its progress across the solar disk. This is not the place to recount the technical details of the method, the challenges of the expeditions, and the mixed results (see Dick, 2003a: Chap. 7), but reporting on the results of the 1874 American expeditions 8  years later, Naval Observatory astronomer Harkness recalled that after the parties returned, attention was first turned to the visual contact observations as the easiest to analyze, but “it was soon found that they were little better than those of the eighteenth century.” Speaking of attempts to measure the image of Venus as it apparently touched and crossed the Sun, around the world the result was the same: …the black drop, and the atmospheres of Venus and the Earth, had again produced a series of complicated phenomena, extending over many seconds of time, from among which it was extremely difficult to pick out the true contact. It was uncertain whether or not different observers had really recorded the same phase, and in every case that question had to be decided before the observations could be used. Thus it came about that within certain rather wide limits the resulting parallax was unavoidably dependent upon the judgment of the computer, and to that extent was mere guesswork. (Harkness, 1883)

The photographic observations were thus all the more important, but here again international disappointment was widespread. To make a long story short, relying heavily on photographic methods, the Americans returned 350 plates in 1874, and 1380 measurable plates in 1882. Harkness did manage to produce a final value, after adjustments with other constants, of 8.809 arcseconds, with a probable error of 0.0059 arcseconds, yielding an Earth–Sun distance of 92,797,000  miles, with a probable error of 59,700 miles (Harkness, 1891, 1894). In the end how important were the transit of Venus observations? In answering this question we need to recall that the transits of Venus were only one method for determining the solar parallax. Ironically, just as the transit of Venus observations were producing an improved result, other methods became practical that gave even better results (Fig.  1.7). This is true of asteroid parallaxes, but especially of the method involving the aberration of light. From the measurement of the aberration of light one can produce the light time; combined with newly accurate measurements of the speed of light an accurate distance can be determined. In the end it was Simon Newcomb, Harkness’s Naval Observatory colleague, who had the last word on which methods were applied to the final solution for the astronomical unit, for it was

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Fig. 1.7  Selected solar parallax determinations, 1860–1976, mostly from transit of Venus measurements, compared to a modern radar determination of the astronomical unit. (From Dick, 2003a: 271)

his system of astronomical constants that was adopted internationally at a Paris conference in 1896. In determining a final value for the solar parallax from all methods, Newcomb gave all photographic observations of the 1874 and 1882 transit a weight of 2, compared to a weight of 40 for Pulkovo Observatory’s determination of solar parallax from the constant of aberration. Considering the probable errors, Newcomb’s system and Harkness’s system actually overlapped in their values for solar parallax, and Newcomb came closest to overlapping the modern value of 8.794146 equivalent to 149,597,871 km (92,955,807 miles). In the end, these expeditions demonstrate that more than science was involved in these expeditions, including international cooperation and the study of other cultures. Reports of transit of Venus expeditions contain a treasure trove of cultural information, and transit of Venus plaques exist around the world at the numerous sites where observations were made (Fig. 1.8, and see Orchiston et al. (2004) and Cottam et al. (2012)). In a broader sense astronomical expeditions undertaken for a variety of purposes both affected and were affected by the cultures in which they were undertaken. In his expedition to Chile during 1848–1852, using another technique to determine the solar parallax, Naval Observatory astronomer James Melville Gilliss wrote several volumes on the cultures of Chile among his six volumes from the expedition (Dick, 2020a: 455; Hermosilla, 2017; Huffman, 1991). The first volume was entitled simply ‘Chile’ and examined its “geography, climate, earthquakes, governments, social conditions, mineral and agricultural resources, commerce, etc” (Gilliss, 1855).

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Fig. 1.8  Transit of Venus plaques marking the sites of worldwide observations exist around the world. This one commemorates the U.S.  Naval Observatory observations at Queenstown, New Zealand in 1874. (Photo: Steven Dick)

Similarly, many solar eclipse expeditions affected the local populations where they were observed, engaging the public in one of the greatest of astronomical spectacles. These spectacles, plus meteor storms, lunar eclipses, and comets among other phenomena, fascinated the public, adding to astronomy’s cultural impact. Wayne Orchiston and his student Stella Cottam have written a book on just this subject, which has received the Osterbrock Prize from the American Astronomical Society (Cottam & Orchiston, 2015; see p. xi in this volume). Transits of Venus are only a small part of the story of measuring the universe. The variety of ways to do so in the modern era—from ground-based parallaxes to spacecraft such as Gaia—was the subject of a book stemming from an International Astronomical Union Colloquium held in the United Kingdom on the occasion of the 2004 transit (Kurtz, 2005). Near the site in central Lancashire where Jeremiah Horrocks first observed such a transit in 1639, Wayne Orchiston and I were among the international group of astronomers at the meeting who viewed the transit during almost all of its six-hour journey across the Sun (we are seated next to each other in the conference photograph on page xiii). We viewed it again in 2012—the last opportunity until the next transit in 2117. We know not what the state of civilization will be then, but it is a safe bet that people will once again gather to view this rare astronomical phenomenon.

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6 Discovery and Classification We now turn to quite a different aspect of astronomy and culture. The great Pluto debate, which began in 2006 when astronomers at the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Prague voted to reclassify Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet (which they controversially declared was not a planet at all) shows how important discovery and classification are in a cultural context. Much to the surprise of the astronomers, not only some scientists but also much of the general public viewed this move with disdain. How could there be only eight planets in the Solar System when they had been taught in school that there were nine? The ensuing discussion (e.g. Brown, 2010; Dick, 2013: Chap. 1; Tyson, 2009), which continues only slightly abated today, is a lesson in the cultural impact of astronomy and how attuned the public can be to their astronomical ambience. Moreover, individual, professional, and cultural preferences clearly affected the IAU decisions. As Stephen Jay Gould has said in regard to biology, “taxonomies are reflections of human thought. They express our most fundamental concepts about the objects of our universe. Each taxonomy is a theory of the creatures it classifies” (Gould, 1988). This is no less true in astronomy. The great Pluto debate extends way beyond Pluto itself and opens a window to many general issues of discovery and classification in astronomy. How does an astronomer know when he or she has discovered a new class of astronomical object? Who decides if a dwarf planet, or a quasar or pulsar is a new class of object? The takeaway from my personal experience with the Pluto debate (I was one of those voting astronomers) was that discovery and classification are concepts that need to be studied, dissected, analyzed and put back together, as I eventually did in Discovery and Classification in Astronomy (Dick, 2013) and Classifying the Cosmos (Dick, 2019a). My conclusion, contrary to popular and even scholarly opinion, is that discovery is an extended process consisting of detection, interpretation, and understanding, with pre-discovery and post-discovery phases, and technological, conceptual, and social roles at each stage (Fig. 1.9). In short, classification is a deep philosophical problem that embodies personal and cultural components. This work led to the construction of the first comprehensive classification system for all classes of astronomical objects according to a set of consistent principles (Dick, 2019a, b), as seen in Fig. 1.10, the so-called ‘Three Kingdom System.’ This begs the question of ‘what is a class,’ and how we can put together a classification system for astronomy, just as has been done in biology (the Linnaean or the Three Domain system), chemistry (the Periodic Table), physics (the Standard Model), and other sciences. While there are multiple possibilities, the system described here consists of the Three Kingdoms of planets, stars, and galaxies, 18 Families, and 82 Classes of objects. Gravitation is the defining organizing principle for the Families and Classes, and the physical nature of the objects is the defining characteristic of the Classes. Whether this system becomes useful for scientific or pedagogical purposes remains to be seen, but it starkly illustrates the problems and promise of discovery and classification—an area of study accelerated by the Great Pluto Debate.

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Fig. 1.9  The extended structure of discovery, showing its three stages of detection, interpretation and basic understanding, as well as the pre-discovery and post-discovery stages. Discovery also has a microstructure consisting of conceptual, technical, and social roles. (From Dick, 2013)

7 Philosophy of Astronomy: The Effect of Culture on Astronomy For most of this essay I have been discussing the effect of astronomy on culture. But what about the effect of culture on astronomy? Here we enter the realm of the philosophy of astronomy (Dick, 2020b), a new discipline that has received only minimal attention among historians of astronomy compared to other sciences. Among the critical issues in philosophy of astronomy are its metaphysical foundations, the roles of metaphysical preconceptions and non-scientific worldviews on astronomy, the nature and limits of reasoning in astronomy and cosmology, the problematic nature of observation, the role of methodology, and (as discussed in this paper) the mutual interactions of astronomy and cosmology with society over time. Many of these issues involve a cultural component; we mention only a few here as illustrative of the issues. The influence of metaphysics on science has been recognized at least since the philosopher E.A.  Burtt wrote his Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1924) almost a century ago, a volume that still resonates and that has been reinforced and refined in the modern context (Daston, 1991; Fry, 2012). Burtt argued that the Scientific Revolution, represented a shift in our conception of the fundamental entities that exist in the universe, for example, space and time, mass, force, action-at-a-­distance, and causality, as well as the mathematization of Nature. In other words the Scientific Revolution characterized by Galileo, Kepler, Newton and all the rest we know so well, represents a change in our conception of the

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Fig. 1.10  The Three Kingdom system delineating 82 classes of astronomical objects. Classification involves individual, professional, and cultural preferences. (From Dick, 2019a, b)

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essential nature of reality. Since then, astronomy has been revolutionized again by other changes in our conception of reality, according to general relativity (where gravity is not a force but a warp in the fabric of space–time) and quantum mechanics. Today, reality is again being revolutionized with the introduction of the concepts of dark matter and dark energy into our cosmological ontology. The origins of these changes in our conceptions of reality have cultural components that require more study. In terms of metaphysical preconceptions and methodology, in his book Practical Mystic: Religion, Science and A. S. Eddington, Matthew Stanley has shown how Eddington’s “innovative methodology was based on values that he carried with him from his Quaker faith,” in particular his belief that “scientists should not obsess over the absolute certainty of their physics [as was the method of the day in Britain], but instead work with a spirit of exploration that relied on physical intuition and observation” (Stanley, 2007). It is safe to say that all astronomers—indeed all scientists— have in one way or another metaphysical preconceptions before they begin their empirical and theoretical work. As the cosmologist George Ellis has said “Some cosmologists tend to ignore the philosophical choices underlying their theories; but simplistic or unexamined philosophical standpoints are still philosophical standpoints!” (Ellis, 2006: 33). This is a stark example of how individual and cultural preconceptions can affect astronomy. In a broader sense societal events may determine the very nature of our astronomical explorations. Martin Harwit’s book In Search of the True Universe (Harwit, 2013) asks what role technology plays in determining our view of the universe. He shows convincingly that World War II technologies adapted for astronomy have produced our conception of the universe today. Nor is this a one-time effect. With the discovery that visible matter constitutes only 4% of all mass-energy in the universe, the rest being dark matter and dark energy, Harwit believes we may now be in a situation similar to that prior to World War II, when astronomy was largely limited to optical wavelengths prior to the opening of the electromagnetic spectrum. He asks what we must do now to expand astronomy’s horizons and go beyond the paradigm of research presented by Vannevar Bush in the wake of WW II. This is a large question of great importance to astronomy, and another stark example of the effect of culture on astronomy. These brief examples emphasize the mutual interactions of astronomy and cosmology with society over time and illustrate that culture can affect astronomy no less than astronomy affects culture in areas ranging from metaphysics to funding. They highlight the need for further research on this aspect of philosophy of astronomy, and hint that the concerns of that embryonic field can immeasurably enrich the study of the history of astronomy. This is a challenge I pose to both future historians and philosophers.

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8 Envoi As eclectic as this essay may seem, we have outlined above only a few of the relationships of cosmos and culture. For a much broader view readers should study the volumes resulting from the conferences on the Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena (INSAP), which have taken place regularly since the inaugural meeting in 1994 at the Vatican. Chris Impey provides an overview of the first seven INSAP conferences (Impey, 2012), and the conference website includes a great deal of information and references to the Proceedings (INSAP website). The conference series continues with INSAP XI and XII now in the planning, an indication of the richness of the subject. Readers will also notice we have not discussed astrology, which, whatever one thinks about its actual efficacy, has indisputably played a large role in popular culture (Bobrick, 2005; Campion, 2012) and even in scientific thinking where astronomy and astrology were often intertwined in history (e.g. Westman, 2011). There is a reputable journal titled Culture and Cosmos: A Journal of the History of Astrology and Cultural Astronomy, edited since its inception in 1997 by Nicholas Campion. Although the journal title indicates a focus on the history of astrology, it also includes much wider aspects of astronomy and culture and is available on open access online (Campion, 1997–). The journal has some cross-fertilization with INSAP and has published some of the INSAP Proceedings. Among other areas unaddressed are the UFO debate, which many in popular culture would consider one of the most interesting implications of astronomy for society, and science fiction with its alien and spaceflight themes, which has not escaped the notice of the JAHH editors (Nazé, 2021). These histories have been beyond the scope of this paper, which highlights only a few of the scientific connections of cosmos and culture that I, Wayne Orchiston, and the numerous authors in the JAHH have addressed. Even here we have not been exhaustive, omitting, for example, the cultural impact of astronomical phenomena such as the Leonid meteor storms (Dick, 1998), the fear-and-awe-inducing spectacles throughout history of comets (Schechner, 1999; Yeomans, 1991) and eclipses (Aveni, 2017), and even controversial theories that larger cometary debris has had a strong impact on historical events (Clube & Napier, 1990). A very different arena stems from NASA and other national space programs: the impact of the imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope (Launius & DeVorkin, 2014, 74–78), sometimes called ‘the people’s telescope;’ the impact of images of Earthrise from the Moon, the whole Earth, and the pale blue dot; and the impact of space exploration itself (Dick & Launius, 2007; Dick, 2018c). NASA has even undertaken studies of cosmos and culture itself, placing cultural evolution in a cosmic context (Dick & Lupisella, 2009). There are many stories on the road from culture to astroculture. But perhaps we have said enough to showcase the intimate connections between cosmos and culture in the past, and to indicate the likelihood that these connections will only increase in the future.

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Dick, S. J. (1996). The biological universe: The twentieth century extraterrestrial life debate and the limits of science. Cambridge University Press. Dick, S. J. (1998). Observation and interpretation of the Leonid Meteors over the last millennium. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 1, 1–20. reprinted in Dick (2020a), pp. 549–568. Dick, S. J. (Ed.). (2000). Many worlds: The new universe, extraterrestrial life and the theological implications. Templeton Foundation Press. Dick, S. J. (2003a). Sky and ocean joined: The US Naval Observatory, 1830–2000. Cambridge University Press. Dick, S.  J. (2003b). Cultural evolution, the postbiological universe, and SETI. International Journal of Astrobiology, 2, 65–74. reprinted in Dick (2020a), pp. 171–190. Dick, S. J. (2004). The transit of Venus. Scientific American, 290(5), 99–105. Dick, S. J. (2005). The biological universe revisited. In W. Orchiston (Ed.), The new astronomy: Opening the electromagnetic window and expanding our view of planet earth (p.  15–26). Springer. reprinted in Dick (2020a), pp. 59–69. Dick, S.  J. (2009). Cosmic evolution: History, culture and human destiny. In S.  J. Dick & M. Lupisella (Eds.), Cosmos & culture: Cultural evolution in a cosmic context. NASA. Dick, S.  J. (2013). Discovery and classification in astronomy: Controversy and consensus. Cambridge University Press. Dick, S. J. (2018a). Astrobiology, discovery, and societal impact. Cambridge University Press. Dick, S. J. (2018b). Toward a constructive naturalistic cosmotheology. In Peters (Ed.), (p. 228–244) reprinted in Dick (2020a), pp. 191–206. Dick, S. J. (2018c). Historical studies in the societal impact of spaceflight. NASA History Series. Dick, S. J. (2019a). Classifying the Cosmos: How we can make sense of the celestial landscape. Springer. Dick, S. J. (2019b). Astronomy’s Three Kingdom System: A comprehensive classification system for celestial objects. In B. Birger Hjorland & C. Claudio Gnoli (Eds.), Encyclopedia of knowledge organization. https://www.isko.org/cyclo/3ks Dick, S. J. (2020a). Space, time, and aliens: Collected works on cosmos and culture. Springer. Dick, S. J. (2020b). The philosophy of astronomy, cosmology, and astrobiology: A preliminary reconnaissance. In S. J. Dick (Ed.), Space, time, and aliens: Collected works on cosmos and culture (pp. 631–653). Springer. Dick, S. J., & Hoskin, M. (1991). Special issue on National Observatories. Journal for the History of Astronomy, 22, 1–100. Dick, S. J., & Launius, R. (2007). Societal impact of spaceflight. NASA, SP-2007-4801. Dick, S.  J., & Lupisella, M. (Eds.). (2009). Cosmos & culture: Cultural evolution in a cosmic context. NASA. Dick, S. J., Orchiston, W., & Love, T. (1998). Simon Newcomb, William Harkness and the nineteenth century American transit of Venus expeditions. Journal for the History of Astronomy, 29, 221–255. Ellis, G.  F. R. (2006). Issues in the philosophy of cosmology. In J.  Butterfield & J.  Earman (Eds.), Philosophy of physics (p.  1183–1285). North Holland. at http://arxiv.org/pdf/ astro-­ph/0602280v2 Fry, I. (2012). Is science metaphysically neutral? Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 43, 665–673. Geppert, A. C. T. (Ed.). (2012). Imagining outer space: European Astroculture in the twentieth century. Palgrave Macmillan. Gilliss, J. M. (1855). US Naval Astronomical Expedition to the southern hemisphere during the years 1849–´50–´51–´52 (Vol. 1). A.O. P. Nicholson. Gould, S. J. (1988). Foreword to Lynn Margulis and Karlene V. Schwartz. In Five kingdoms: An illustrated guide to the Phyla of life on earth. W.H. Freeman. Gullberg, S., et  al. (2021). Archaeoastronomy and astronomy in culture: Triennial report 2018–2021. In M.  T. Lago (Ed.), Transactions IAU, volume XXXA, reports on astronomy

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2018–2021. https://www.iau.org/static/science/scientific_bodies/working_groups/284/wg284-­ triennial-­report-­2018-­2021.pdf Harkness, W. (1883). Address by William Harkness. Proceedings of the AAAS 31st Meeting, August 1882, 77. Harkness, W. (1891). The solar parallax and its relation constants, Washington Observations for 1885, Appendix III. Harkness, W. (1894). On the magnitude of the solar system, Astronomy and Astrophysics, 13, 605–626. Harwit, M. (2013). In search of the true universe: The tools, shaping, and cost of cosmological thought. Cambridge University Press. Hayden, E. E. (1906). The present status of the use of standard time. Publications of the US Naval Observatory, 4, Appendix IV, 9. Hermosilla, G.  H. (2017). Revisiting J.M.  Gilliss’ astronomical expedition to Chile during 1849–1852. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 20, 161–176. Howse, D. (1997). Greenwich time and the longitude. Philip Wilson. Huffman, W. (1991). The United States Naval Astronomical Expedition (1849–1852) for the solar parallax. Journal for the History of Astronomy, 22(69), 208–220. Impey, C. (2012). The inspiration of astronomical phenomena. Culture and Cosmos, 6, 5–17. http://www.cultureandcosmos.org/pdfs/16/Impey_INSAPVII_Inspiration_of_Astronomical_ Phenomena.pdf Impey, C., Spitz, A. H., & Stoeger, W. (Eds.). (2013). Encountering life in the universe: Ethical foundations and social implications of astrobiology. University of Arizona Press. INSAP. (1994–). Inspiration of astronomical phenomena. https://insap.org/history/ Kinns, R. (2009). Time-keeping in the Antipodes: A critical comparison of the Sydney and Lyttelton time balls. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 12, 87–107. Kinns, R. (2021a). Time signals for mariners in South Africa. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 24, 285–314. Kinns, R. (2021b). Time signals for mariners in the Atlantic Islands and West Africa. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 24, 315–336. Kinns, R., Fuller, P., & Bateman, D. (2021). Exploring the Portsmouth time balls. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 24, 751–769. Krisciunas, K. (1988). Astronomical centers of the world. Cambridge University Press. Krupp, E.  C. (1983). Echoes of the ancient skies: The astronomy of lost civilizations. Harper and Row. Krupp, E. C. (1991). Beyond the Blue Horizon: Myths and legends of the sun, moon, stars and planets. Harper Collins. Kurtz, D.  W. (2005). Transits of Venus: New views of the solar system and galaxy. Cambridge University Press. Landes, D. S. (1983). Revolution in time: Clocks and the making of the modern world. Harvard University Press. Launius, R., & DeVorkin, D. (Eds.). (2014). Hubble’s legacy: Reflections by those who dreamed it, built it, and observed the universe with it. Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press. Lewis, C. S. (1964). The discarded image. Cambridge University Press. Magli, G. (2009). Mysteries and discoveries of Archaeoastronomy: From Giza to Easter Island. Copernicus Books. Magli, G. (2020). Archaeoastronomy: Introduction to the science of stars and stones. Springer. Marchant, J. (2020). The human Cosmos: Civilization and the stars. Dutton. May, W. E. (1973). A history of Marine navigation. Norton. McCluskey, S.  C. (1998). Astronomies and cultures in early medieval Europe. Cambridge University Press. Nazé, Y. (2021). Two proto-science fiction novels written in French by eighteenth century women. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 24, 125–136.

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Orchiston, W., Love, T., & Dick, S. (2000). Refining the astronomical unit: Queenstown and the 1874 Transit of Venus. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 3, 23–44. Orchiston, W., et al. (2004). The IAU Transit of Venus Working Group. Progress report 3. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 7, 50–52. http://www.narit.or.th/files/JAHH/2004JAHH vol07/2004JAHH....7...50O.pdf Pankenier, D. W. (2013). Astrology and cosmology in early China: Conforming earth to heaven. Cambridge University Press. Penprase, B. E. (2011). The power of stars: How celestial observations have shaped civilization. Springer. Peters, T. (2018). Astrotheology: Science and theology meet extraterrestrial life. Cascade Books. Price, D. J. (1963). Little science, big science. Columbia University Press. Ruggles, C. (2015). Handbook of archaeoastronomy and ethno-astronomy. Springer. Ruggles, C., & Cotte, M. (2011). Heritage sites of astronomy and archaeoastronomy in the context of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, ICOMOS & IAU thematic study. Ocarinabooks. Ruggles, C., & Cotte, M. (2017). Heritage sites of astronomy and archaeoastronomy in the context of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, ICOMOS & IAU thematic study (Vol. 2). UNESCO. Sadler, D.  H. (1976). Lunar distances and the nautical almanac. In The origins, achievements and influence of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich: 1675–1975. Vistas in astronomy (Vol. 20, pp. 113–121). Schechner, S. (1999). Comets, popular culture, and the birth of modern cosmology. Princeton University Press. Schechner, S. (2014). Time and time again: How science and culture shape the past, present, and future. Harvard Collection of Scientific Instruments. https://scholar.harvard.edu/saraschechner/ publications/time-and-time-again-how-science-and-culture-shape-past-present-and-future. Seidlemann, P. K., & Hohenkerk, C. (Eds.). (2020). The history of celestial navigation: Rise of the Royal Observatory and Nautical Almanacs. Springer. Sobel, D., & Andrewes, W. (1998). The illustrated longitude: The true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time. Walker and Company. Stanley, M. (2007). Practical mystic: Religion, science and A.S.  Eddington. University of Chicago Press. Stephens, C. (2002). On time: How America has learned to live by the clock. Little, Brown and Company. Tyson, N. (2009). The Pluto Files: The rise and fall of America’s favorite planet. W.W. Norton. UNESCO World Heritage. https://whc.unesco.org/en/astronomy/ Van Helden, A. (1985). Measuring the universe: Cosmic dimensions from Aristarchus to Halley. University of Chicago Press. Weinberg, A. (1967). Reflections on big science. MIT Press. Westman, R. (2011). The Copernican question: Prognostication, skepticism, and celestial order. University of California Press. Whitrow, G.  J. (1988). Time in history: Views of time from prehistory to the present. Oxford University Press. Williamson, R. (1984). Living the sky: The Cosmos of the American Indian. University of Oklahoma Press. Wolfschmidt, G. (2021). Cultural heritage of observatories in context with the IAU–UNESCO initiative: Highlights in the development of architecture. In E.  Boutsikas, S.  McCluskey, & J. Steele (Eds.), Advancing cultural astronomy (pp. 291–314). Yeomans, D. K. (1991). Comets: A chronological history of observation, science, myth, and folklore. Wiley. Zakariya, N. (2017). A final story: Science, myth and beginnings. University of Chicago Press.

Chapter 2

Sweden’s Thirty Days in February: Calendar Reform Lars Gislén

1 Introduction In the Julian calendar an ordinary year has 365 days while in leap years that occur every fourth year there are 366 days with a leap day at the end of February. The Julian leap year rule gives a mean length of the solar year of 365.25 days. The Julian calendar was established by Julius Caesar in BCE 45 after suggestions from Greek mathematicians and philosophers. The reason for the calendar was that the original Roman calendar, which was a luni–solar calendar with occasional leap months, had totally collapsed because the decisions of when to add the leap months had become political and was frequently abused to prolong mandate periods of allies or shorten them for opponents (Brind’Amour, 1983). After some initial misunderstandings, every fourth year was to begin with counted by inclusive reckoning and in practice became every third year, the Julian calendar was correctly implemented by emperor Augustus around the time of the birth of Christ. The year originally started with the month March which is the reason why the leap day is added at the end of February as the last day of the year and also why we still have the names September, October, November, and December then being the month’s number seven, eight, nine, and ten. July was originally called Quintilis but was renamed after Julius Caesar and August, originally Sextilis, was renamed after Augustus. Some later Roman emperors like Caligula and Nero also tried to rename the months. There is an amusing story of how to explain the length of the months in the Julian calendar that is ascribed to the astronomer Johannes de Sacrobosco (c. 1195 – c. 1256). The story goes that from the beginning the months in the Roman calendar were those that had alternatively 30 and 29 days starting with 30 days in January. L. Gislén (*) Division of Particle and Nuclear Physics, Lund University, Lund, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Gullberg, P. Robertson (eds.), Essays on Astronomical History and Heritage, Historical & Cultural Astronomy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29493-8_2

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That would give twelve lunar months with an average of 29.5 days, an approximation of the length of the synodic month. In order to arrive at a solar year with 365 days there was an excess of 11 days. Julius Caesar was then said to have taken these 11  days and added 1  day to each month except for February that retained 29 days. This would give July 31 days. The story then goes that Augustus took a day from February and added that day to August in order that his month would not be shorter than that of Caesar and then switched 30 and 31 days for the four last months of the year. There is no evidence at all for this story.

2 The Gregorian Calendar The tropical solar year, the time between the Sun’s return to the vernal point has a mean length of 365.2422  days and there is a difference with the Julian year of 0.0078 days that will make the date of the real vernal equinox slowly recede in that calendar. The Nicaean Council in CE 325 stated that the ecclesial vernal equinox was on 21 March as an approximation of the real equinox at that time. This date was important because it determined, together with Easter full moon, the date of Easter Sunday, the most important holy day in Christianity. However, in the middle of the sixteenth century the real vernal equinox had receded back about 10  days in the Julian calendar and Easter occurred more and more late in the spring. Also, the ecclesial new moons, computed by cyclical reckoning, deviated with up to 4 days from the real new moons. Already in the centuries before there had been several suggestions of how to correct what was frequently referred to as ‘the scandalous error’ (Nothaft, 2018). One of the problems was that the true length of the tropical solar year was not very well known and may not even be constant. One of the reasons for this was the erroneous hypothesis of the trepidation of the equinoxes. Already Hipparchos had in the second century BCE found that the equinoxes moved relative to the stars by about 1˚ per century, the precession of the equinoxes. The renowned astronomer Claudius Ptolemy who lived in the second century CE adopted this as a fact while the true value of the precession is instead about 1˚ per 72 years. Later Arabic astronomers found that their measurements of the precession differed from that of Ptolemy and assumed that the precession was not constant but had two components, one steady part and one part that varied periodically. However, after thorough preparatory work during several decades by very competent mathematicians and astronomers, the Gregorian calendar reform was instituted by a papal bull Inter gravissimas on 24 March 1582, issued by Pope Gregorius XIII (Fig.  2.1). Among other things, the calendar contained the rule that centennial years that are not divisible by 400 are not leap years, like for instance the years 1700, 1800, and 1900. This causes the Gregorian solar year to have a mean length of 365.2425 days, a much better approximation to the tropical year than before, the error is only 26 seconds per year. In order that the real vernal equinox would again fall close to the ecclesial equinox of 21 March, 10 days were deleted from the calendar in the year 1582: Thursday 4

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Fig. 2.1  The first page of the papal bull Inter gravissimas. (After Wikipedia)

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October was followed by Friday 15 October. The Gregorian reform also included new rules on how to calculate the dates of the new moons such that they would not deviate too much from the real new moons. In hindsight the reform must be considered as very sensible and necessary.

3 The Reception of the Reform The Catholic parts of Europe and their colonies immediately followed the papal decree. However, in the Protestant countries of Europe the reform was met with great suspicion and hostility, being seen as a papist plot against the reformation and they refused to give up the Julian calendar called the Old Style. The detested Gregorian calendar was called the New Style in order to avoid any papal reference. The first Protestant state to adopt the Gregorian calendar in 1612 was the Duchy of Prussia. The remaining Protestant states in Europe reluctantly switched during the eighteenth century. England in 1752 finally implemented the reform when the difference between the calendars had increased to 11 days; these were deleted by letting Wednesday 2 September to be followed by Thursday 14. This caused some displeasure among people who felt that they were robbed of 11 days of their life,

Fig. 2.2  William Hogarth’s painting ‘An Election Entertainment’ from 1755. (After Wikipedia)

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although tales of riots were false (Poole, 1998), but the change certainly caused accounting problems with for example taxes, salaries and rents. There is a famous painting by William Hogarth from 1755 entitled ‘An Election Entertainment’ (Fig. 2.2) that depicts a political tavern dinner. In front of the man sitting on the floor in the middle of the painting lies a campaign banner with the text “Give us our Eleven Days”. In Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire the change of the civil calendar was not made until the beginning of the twentieth century, with Greece in 1923 being the last country in Western Europe. In Russia, which made the change in 1918 following the revolution, people still today celebrate a second Christmas at the beginning of January when it would occur according to the Julian calendar. Alaska, bought by USA in 1867 from Russia, changed the calendar that year by having Saturday, 7 October change to Friday, 18 October at noon. The change in the calendar would then actually have been 12  days, but in practice became a day less because the International Date Line was also moved to run thought the Bering Strait causing Alaska to gain 1 day by changing sides relative to the Date Line (Downing, 1900). The Greek Orthodox church still uses the Julian calendar for religious purposes.

4 The Swedish Way In Sweden the calendrical reform was made in an odd and quite confused way. King Charles XII (1682–1718) (Fig. 2.3), who had a personal interest in mathematics and astronomy, and then only 17 years old just having inherited the throne, decided that the change would be gradually introduced. Starting with the year 1700, eleven leap days would successively be deleted from the following leap years, such that finally from 1740 and on the Swedish calendar would be in phase with the Gregorian calendar. This bizarre procedure would mean that the Swedish calendar for 40 years would deviate from the calendars of all other countries in Europe. Following the King’s decree, the leap day of the year 1700 was deleted. However, the same year Sweden was attacked by a triple alliance of Denmark, Poland, and Russia and the Swedish king became isolated outside the borders of the country. After having successfully defeated Denmark and Poland, he turned against Russia and headed for Moscow in 1706. However, after some initial victories the Swedish army met with a total disaster in the battle of Poltava in Ukraine in 1709. In the general chaos the deletions of the leap days due in 1704 and 1708 were forgotten. In January 1711 Charles XII fled from the Russians to the Ottoman Empire. Exiled with remnants of his army in the Turkish town of Bender (Bengtsson, 1960; Voltaire, 1912), he sent a decree home to Sweden ordering the return to the Julian calendar by reinserting the leap day that was deleted in 1700. This was made by having two leap days in February 1712, thus assigning 30 days to that month (Fig. 2.4). The adoption of the Gregorian calendar was not made until 1753, by deleting eleven calendar days and letting Friday, 1 March follow Thursday, 17 February.

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Fig. 2.3  The Swedish King Charles XII. (After Wikipedia)

However, Sweden was still not wholly on the train. In the Gregorian calendar the date of Easter Sunday is computed using cyclical rules for Easter full moon in the so-called Computus (Butcher, 1877). The basic rule is that Easter Sunday falls on the first Sunday after the first (cyclically computed) ecclesial full moon on or after 21 March, which is considered the ecclesial vernal equinox. However, in Sweden and until 1774 in the Protestant parts of Germany, Easter was computed astronomically in the so-called ‘improved calendar’ using Kepler’s Rudolphine tables to calculate the vernal equinox and Easter full moon. This made Sweden celebrate Easter one week later than all other countries in Europe in 1802, 1805, and 1818 (but not in 1825 and 1829 when according to the improved calendar rules it should have been 1  week later). Not until the year 1844 was the Gregorian Easter Computus finally implemented by Sweden (Beckman, 1924; van Gent, web site).

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Fig. 2.4  The Swedish calendar for February 1712. The text at the top says “February has XXX days”. (After Wikipedia)

Acknowledgement  It has always been a great pleasure to work with Wayne Orchiston with his keen interest and curiosity in all matters of astronomy and calendar for which I want to express my profound gratitude.

References Beckman, N. (1924). Tideräkning och historia. Nordstedts och Söners Förlag (in Swedish). Bengtsson, F. G. (1960). The life of Charles XII. Macmillan. Brind’Amour, B. (1983). Le Calendrier Romain. Recherches Chronologiques (in French). Butcher, S. (1877). The ecclesial calendar: Its theory and construction. Hodges, Foster and Figgis. Downing, A.  M. W. (1900). Where the day changes. Journal of the British Astronomical Association, 10, 176–178. Nothaft, C. P. E. (2018). Scandalous error. Calendar reform and calendrical astronomy in medieval Europe. Oxford University Press. Poole, R. (1998). Time’s alteration: Calendar reform in early modern England. Routledge. van Gent, R. Anomalous Easter Sunday dates in Sweden and Finland, https://webspace.science. uu.nl/~gent0113/easter/easter_text3b.htm Voltaire, M. A. (1912). History of Charles twelfth. J.M. Dent and Sons.

Chapter 3

Early Star Charts of the Dutch East India Company Richard de Grijs

1 Preamble Over the course of the past decade, I have become increasingly interested in exploring the history of maritime navigation, specifically from an astronomical perspective. This has resulted in the publication of a monograph on the determination of longitude at sea in the seventeenth century (de Grijs, 2017), followed by a few dozen peer-reviewed and popular articles on aspects of the perennial ‘longitude problem’ that affected oceanic shipping until well into the nineteenth century. Upon my relocation to Australia in early 2018, I was keen to expand my history of astronomy-related scholarship to include regional aspects. An initial series of two research articles focusing on science on the ‘First Fleet,’ which sailed from England to Australia in 1787–1788, and in particular the subsequent establishment of the first astronomical observatory in New South Wales by second lieutenant William Dawes of the British Marines resulted (de Grijs & Jacob, 2021a, b). While researching the history of longitude determination and the associated longitude awards offered by the authorities in the Dutch Republic in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries (de Grijs, 2021), I came across one of Wayne Orchiston’s articles that addressed the history of Indonesian astronomy. During the period of interest, Dutch and Indonesian histories were closely intertwined, although not necessarily happily so at all times. I was particularly intrigued by the following passage from that article: In 1917 the distinguished British amateur astronomer, Edward Ball Knobel (1841–1930, […]) published a paper on [Frederick] de Houtman and his star catalog in MNRAS (Knobel,

R. de Grijs (*) School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Gullberg, P. Robertson (eds.), Essays on Astronomical History and Heritage, Historical & Cultural Astronomy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29493-8_3

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R. de Grijs 1917a), but since then no-one has made an in-depth study of this important astronomer and his pioneering star catalog. (Though see Dekker, 1987). Here is an exciting project for an Indonesian astronomer: the relevant records are in Holland patiently awaiting your attention! (Orchiston, 2017: 147).

Wayne’s encouragement inspired me to look into the early star charts of the southern sky produced by astronomers associated with the Dutch East India Company and its precursor. You are currently reading the resulting review article. Despite Wayne’s assertion that no-one had made an in-depth study of de Houtman’s work, I came across precisely such a study by Verbunt and van Gent (2011).1 Nevertheless, most studies of this kind tend to focus on relatively narrowly constrained aspects of the history of maritime navigation. In the present article, I have therefore attempted to offer a more comprehensive overview of how de Houtman and his contemporaries went about obtaining their observations, the trials and tribulations they encountered during their voyages, and a characterisation of the resulting star charts and catalogues. I have expressly refrained from composing an overall biography of de Houtman and of the context in which he lived his life. The interested reader is instead referred to the recent comprehensive account, Spice at Any Price, by Howard Gray (2019).

2 The Eerste Schipvaert to the East Indies In the Dutch Republic, the Age of Discovery encompassed the nation’s ‘Golden Age’ (approximately 1588–1672), which led to a significant expansion of trade activity well beyond the relatively safe waters of the North Sea and the Hanseatic ports of northern Europe to destinations as far away as the East Indies, present-day Indonesia. This required advanced navigational aids to secure safe travel across the open oceans (Schilder & van Egmond, 2007; de Grijs, 2021). The joint pursuit of trade and practical science came naturally to the sailors engaged in the Dutch East India voyages. Scientific endeavours were pursued systematically ever since the first Dutch voyage to Asia of 1595–1597, commonly known as the Eerste Schipvaert (van Berkel, 1998). On that voyage, Petrus Plancius (1552–1622; Fig. 3.1, left)—the Dutch–Flemish astronomer, cartographer and theologian—ordered that sufficient numbers of observations of variations of the ‘magnetic declination’ (deviations of the compass needle from true North) be obtained as a potential but ultimately unsuccessful means to determine one’s longitude at sea (de Grijs, 2021).

 While perusing Verbunt and van Gent (2011), I noticed an issue that requires correction. For the record, these authors refer to de Houtman’s entry F46 in their Table 5, Section 5.4 and Appendix B.1 as a star in the Small Magellanic Cloud (which is correct), whereas in their Section 5.1 they incorrectly classify the same entry as belonging to the Large Magellanic Cloud. 1

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Fig. 3.1  Principal characters driving the narrative in the present article. (left) Petrus Plancius (1552–1622). (Wikimedia Commons; public domain). (middle) Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser (ca. 1540–1596). (Google Arts and Culture; public domain). (right) Frederick de Houtman (1570/1–1627). (Rijksmuseum, SK-A-2727, via Wikimedia Commons; Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication)

Plancius produced the earliest-known maps of the southern sky. An extremely rare Plancius map from 1592 (Blundeville, 1636; Knobel, 1917b) preceded a more commonly available version. The latter, published in 1594, is included in the Orbis terrarum typus de integro multis in locis emendatus Petro Plancio (Whole world map with many additions by Petrus Plancius, 1594; see van Linschoten, 1599). Plancius’ 1594 map (Fig. 3.2) includes the 48 Ptolemaic constellations published in Ptolemy’s masterwork Mathēmatikē Syntaxi, better known as the Almagest (Second century CE), as well as Columba (whose stars were known by Ptolemaic scholars), Crux (also known by Ptolemy, but here listed as a separate constellation for the first time), Eridanus (expanded from Ptolemy’s 34th star to α Eridani), Triangulum Australe and a large constellation in the shape of a man known as ‘Polophilax’ (Knobel, 1917a). Scholars agree that at this time, no other southern hemisphere constellations were known, a notion supported by Thomas Hood’s (1556–1620) statement associated with his Celestial Map of 1590 (Fig. 3.3) that no stars other than those listed by Ptolemy had been observed (Knobel, 1917a). Therefore, when the Eerste Schipvaert left the Dutch East India Company’s Texel roads on 2 April 1595, Plancius instructed his disciple Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser van Em(b)den (ca. 1540–1596; Fig.  3.1, middle)—also known as Petrus Theodorus F(ilius) Embdanus or Peter Theodors Sohn (e.g., Moll, 1825; Knobel, 1917a)—to obtain observations of the stars around the South Celestial Pole. The Eerste Schipvaert expedition consisted of four ships, including the Hollandia (or Hollandsche Leeuw, ‘Dutch Lion’), Mauritius, Amsterdam and Het Duyfken (‘the

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Fig. 3.2  Orbis terrarum typus de integro multis in locis emendatus Petro Plancio (Whole world map with many additions by Petrus Plancius, 1594). (Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Fig. 3.3  Thomas Hood’s Celestial Map, 1590. (© David Rumsey Map Collection; reproduced with permission)

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Little Dove’). Keyser was principal navigator on the Hollandia and subsequently on the Mauritius, starting as head of the steersmen on the former, under captain Jan Dignum(s)z (d. 1595). The Hollandia arrived at the Baie de Saint-Augustin in Madagascar on 2 or 3 September 1595, desperate to obtain fresh supplies and recover from the hardships endured en route, including numerous instances of scurvy. The convoy remained anchored and wind-bound at Madagascar for several months, until April or May 1596. During this time, Keyser (who was well versed in mathematics and astronomy): … sought comfort in science, and enriched his knowledge of astronomy by improving the position of old and the observation of new constellations. (Knobel, 1917a: 417)

Knobel (1917a) further suggests that at the latitude of Madagascar, approximately 47° South, he would have been able to observe stars as faint as 5th or 6th magnitude in the South Celestial Pole region. Knobel then adds that Keyser most likely used Tycho Brahe’s (1546–1601) observations, which were supplied by Plancius, to determine the approximate right ascensions of the newly observed stars. Paulus Merula (1558–1607), the historian and geographer, explained that Keyser made his observations from the ship’s crow’s nest using an unspecified instrument he had received from Plancius (Merula, 1605). That instrument was most likely a cross-staff, a quadrant or an astrolabium catholicum, that is, a universal astrolabe, which represented an innovation with respect to the planispheric astrolabe in common use in that it would work at any latitude. The fleet comprising the Eerste Schipvaert eventually arrived in the Sunda Strait and at Bantam (now Banten, in West Java, present-day Indonesia) in September 1596. Keyser died soon after their arrival, some time between 11 and 13 September 1596 (ab Utrecht Dresselhuis, 1841; de Waard, 1912: 674). Keyser was clearly held in high regard by the Company of Distant Lands, the predecessor of the Dutch East India Company, which referred to him as “… a highly experienced sailor, by whose death the Company of Distant Lands—currently at Bantam—has lost a lot” (ab Utrecht Dresselhuis, 1841: 530; own translation). Keyser’s observations reached Plancius following the fleet’s return to the Texel anchorage on 10 August 1597.

3 Controversial Credit The astronomical observations and the resulting constellations derived from the voyage of the Eerste Schipvaert were first published in 1597 or 1598 on a celestial globe produced by Plancius (Dekker, 1987), and again a year or two later on a globe made by the Dutch cartographer Jodocus Hondius (1563–1612; Fig. 3.4; van der Krogt, 1993). Although some of the stars included among Keyser’s observations had been known previously (e.g., 107 of Keyser’s stars were part of the Ptolemaic constellations; Knobel, 1917a; Tichelaar, n.d.), delineation of 12 new southern

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Fig. 3.4  Celestial globe made by Jodocus Hondius, from 1600. (© Linda Hall Library; reproduced with permission)

constellations is usually credited to Plancius, Keyser and Frederick de Houtman (1570/1–1627; Fig. 3.1, right). Unfortunately, Keyser’s original notes have been lost, and so we do not know much else about the man’s life or accomplishments. It is, therefore, not clear whether the definition of those 12 new southern constellations is entirely attributable to Keyser. Dekker (1987) has suggested that Plancius himself stood at the basis of the new constellations (see also Verbunt & van Gent, 2011; Tichelaar, n.d.), whereas the scholarly and popular literature is rife with suggestions that it was, instead, de Houtman who should receive full credit. Let us consider this latter claim in more detail. De Houtman was the younger brother of Cornelis de Houtman (1565–1599), the merchant seaman in overall command of the Eerste Schipvaert. Frederick de Houtman sailed as volunteer sub-­ commissioner on the Hollandia, supporting the expedition’s mercantile aspects. He is thought to have assisted Keyser with his astronomical observations and likely made independent astronomical observations himself, including substantive contributions to the 12 newly delineated constellations—although his astronomical credentials remain fiercely debated (e.g., ab Utrecht Dresselhuis, 1841; Knobel, 1917a; Van Lohuizen, 1966; van der Sijs, 2000; Verbunt & van Gent, 2011; Ridpath, 2018: Ch. 1, p. 3; Tichelaar, n.d.; and references therein). Frederick himself states in the Introduction to the catalogue of southern stars he eventually published (see Sect. 4) that he made some observations himself during

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the voyage of the Eerste Schipvaert, viz. “Also added [are] the declination of several fixed stars which during the [Eerste Schipvaert] I have observed around the South Pole” (de Houtman, 1603: Introduction; own translation). De Houtman’s assertion is supported by statements from both the Dutch geometer and astronomer Adriaan Adriaanszoon (1571–1635)—better known as Metius (‘measurer’)—and the well-­ known cartographer Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571–1638), against the objections of Merula (ab Utrecht Dresselhuis, 1841). Metius (1621: 4–5) explicitly endorsed de Houtman’s credentials: Near the South Pole there are numerous stars that do not appear above our horizon: of which the most important ones have been carefully observed by the audacious Governor Frederick [de] Houtman (at one time my disciple in astronomy) in the East Indies on the island of Sumatra, … (Own translation; my emphasis).

On the other hand, it is plausible that de Houtman had unfettered access to Keyser’s observations on the long voyage home, following the latter’s demise in Sumatra, and so it is not inconceivable that de Houtman may have tried his hand at grouping the newly observed stars into easily recognisable constellations. Verbunt and van Gent (2011) undertook a careful, quantitative comparison of the early modern star catalogues of the southern sky published by de Houtman in 1603 (see Sect. 4), Kepler in 1627 (specifically the Rudolphine Tables, with the addition of stars he referred to as second and third class, Secunda classis and Tertia classis) and Halley in 1679. They concluded that the observations used to delineate the new constellations were mostly obtained during the Eerste Schipvaert (see also Stein, 1917). This agrees with de Houtman’s statement in his Introduction, although he does not acknowledge any contribution by Keyser. Verbunt and van Gent (2011) further dismiss the suggestion by Knobel (1917a) that de Houtman may simply have plagiarised Keyser’s observations, given the impossibility to observe many of the catalogued stars from Sumatra (as stated in de Houtman’s Introduction). Finally, Verbunt and van Gent (2011) emphasise that Dekker (1987) found significant differences between the new constellations as represented on the Hondius globes of 1598 and 1601 (which had to be based on observations obtained during the Eerste Schipvaert) and those on Blaeu’s globe of 1603  (Fig. 3.5). The latter, which included stars that expanded the Ptolemaic constellations, relied on additional observations obtained by de Houtman during his second voyage to the East Indies of 1598–1602 (see Sect. 3). Contrary to Dekker’s (1987) assertion that Keyser and de Houtman may have obtained independent observations, Verbunt and van Gent (2011) suggest that Plancius and Blaeu may instead have independently analysed a common data set. As such, and given the available documentation, it seems most likely that Keyser was the primary observer, whereas de Houtman contributed his share to the final data set. This conclusion is also reflected by Bodel Nijenhuis (1831: 321): Our [de] Houtman can just as well as P[ieter] Dirkz[oon Keyser] have had the Amsterdammer P[etrus] Plancius as tutor in mathematics. However, what would have been the correct relationship between both astronomers, the Ostfrisian [Keyser] and the Hollander [de Houtman], is as yet not fully clear to me. (Own translation).

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Fig. 3.5  Celestial globe made by Willem Janszoon Blaeu, from 1603. (© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, London; reproduced with permission)

4 Frederick de Houtman’s Second Voyage In 1597, on his way home following the Eerste Schipvaert, de Houtman may have started planning a second observing campaign of the southern sky already. His next voyage to the East Indies would commence shortly. Cornelis and Frederick de Houtman departed on 25 March 1598 once again to the East. This time, Frederick was captain of the Leeuwinne (‘Lioness’), whereas the expedition’s overall command resided with his brother Cornelis once again. The voyage was ill-fated, however. On 11 September 1599, a day prior to their departure from Sumatra to Johor (Malaysia), 29 of the ships’ crew were murdered, including Cornelis de Houtman, whereas Frederick and several tens of their compatriots were taken prisoner by sultan Alauddin Ri’ayat Syah Sayyid al-Mukammal (d. 1605) of Aceh (northern Sumatra). Frederick remained the sultan’s unwilling guest for 26 months. He recorded his experiences, the pressure he was put under to convert and the ordeals he was forced to endure in his prison cell in his Cort Verhael (‘Brief account,’ 1601). Perhaps surprisingly, his tone is more curious and understanding than bitter. It took an intervention by Prince Maurits (Maurice) of Nassau, the Dutch regent, including a

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shipment of arms, mirrors, and money, to secure de Houtman’s release in 1601. Meanwhile, Frederick made good use of his time in captivity by studying Malay (the lingua franca in Southeast Asia at the time) and by making astronomical observations. The astronomical observations obtained during his second voyage to the East Indies and his time in captivity supplemented and complemented those made on the first expedition, that is, the eventual catalogue contained a significantly increased number of observations of improved quality, many based on better calculations (e.g., Tichelaar, n.d.). In particular, he improved and expanded the body of observations of the Ptolemaean constellations during his stay in Aceh (Verbunt & van Gent, 2011). Upon his release, de Houtman returned to Alkmaar in the Dutch Republic in 1602. Settled once again in his hometown, he completed a Dutch–Malay–Malagasy dictionary and grammar guide, published in 1603.2 Curiously, he published the delineations of a set of southern constellations as well as his astronomical observations, both those resulting from the Eerste Schipvaert and those from his second expedition, as an appendix to his language compendium. This rather unusual choice resulted in the catalogue’s initial decline into obscurity. De Houtman’s catalogue, the oldest surviving catalogue of southern stars published in book form, contained “… many fixed stars, located around the South Pole, never seen before this time” (de Houtman, 1603: Introduction). He explicitly declared that it was based on his own observations, There will be found at the end the declinations of several fixed stars in the region of the South Pole which I had observed on my first voyage, and which on my second voyage I revised and corrected with more care and brought up to the number of 300, as may be seen on the Celestial Globe published by William Jansen [Blaeu]. (de Houtman, 1603: Dedicatory letter to the vocabulary; translation: Knobel, 1917a). … and that it aimed to “serve all sailors, who navigate south of the equinoctial line and are of interest to all lovers of astronomy or the mathematical arts”. (de Houtman, 1603: Introduction; translation: Knobel, 1917a).

De Houtman obtained a formal privilege for his publication from the States General of the United Provinces of the Dutch Republic (the national government) for 8 years; an extract from the official award follows (own translation): On the basis of the patent letters, the States General of the United Dutch Provinces have awarded their honorable servant Frederik Pietersz. de Houtman the sole privilege for the next eight years to have printed, published and sold a certain Language Book or Dictionarium of Dutch, Malay and Malagasy, together with many Turkish and Arabic words, and moreover a few fixed stars that are close to the South Pole, to about thirty-five degrees South of the Equator, about three hundred in number. They have prohibited that this Language Book bearing the aforesaid stars be reprinted, in whole or in part, within these United Countries during the aforementioned eight-year period, or that it, after reprinting elsewhere, be imported into such Countries under any pretext, under penalty of forfeiture of the reprinted

 The book contained four lists of words (Tichelaar, n.d.), including Dutch–Malay (2638 words), Dutch–Malagasy (2505 words), Dutch–Turkish (1098 words), and Dutch–Arabic (1096 words). 2

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R. de Grijs copies, and in addition of the sum of one hundred Carolus guilders, to be spent as follows: one third for the Officer, one third for the poor and the remaining one-third for the aforementioned Frederik de Houtman, as is more fully apparent from the said patent letters. Dated 4 February 1603. Sealed and signed by settlement of the States General. C. Aerssens.3

5 De Houtman’s Southern Star Catalogue As a practical guide, the book was used extensively during subsequent expeditions. It was popular among merchants and interested laypeople alike, and so it was republished and translated a number of times. In both 1673 and 1680, the language compendium was reissued by order of the Governors of the Dutch East India Company (de Houtman, 1673–1680). The star catalogue and the Dutch–Malagasy dictionary had been omitted, the latter presumably because South Africa rather than Madagascar had become the usual way station. The dictionary component was followed by twelve practical dialogues in Malay, which took centre stage over the three Malagasy dialogues from the first edition (van der Sijs, 2000; Tichelaar, n.d.) and for which de Houtman had presumably collected his information during their extended sojourn in Madagascar in 1595–1596 (Knobel, 1917a). The star catalogue’s title page in the appendix of the 1603 edition reads thus: Here follow several fixed stars [observed], with efficient instruments, by Frederick de Houtman, in the island of Sumatra, [their positions] corrected and their numbers increased. For the use and service of those who navigate South of the equinoctial line, also for all amateurs and those who have occasion for the best. These stars are arranged according to their Right Ascension; that is, the degree and minute which a star in the South or North has from where the equinoctial line cuts through [sic]. Declination is the number of degrees and minutes a star is distant from the equinoctial line towards the South or North Pole. Magnitude is the size of the stars: often a star is of the first size or greatest light: thus there are seven [sic] degrees of size and light. (Translation: Knobel, 1917a).

It contained observations of 304 stars overall, although for one star (located in the tail of the constellation Scorpius) celestial coordinates are lacking. Of the remaining 303 stars, which were only visible from the southern hemisphere, 107 were already known by Ptolemy (Knobel, 1917a), whereas for 135 observations had been obtained by Keyser. Since Keyser’s original notes have been lost, it is unclear whether the remaining 61 stars were, in fact, observed by him or if they represent de Houtman’s unique contributions. Careful comparison of Keyser’s and de Houtman’s positions reveals numerous discrepancies, and so it would not be out of character to consider de Houtman as the principal observer of the latter stars (e.g., Verbunt & van Gent, 2011; Tichelaar, n.d.). In any case, de Houtman’s (1603) southern star catalogue provided the basis for the renaming of many of the southern constellations (Hidayat, 2000). It was translated into French in 1881.

 Cornelis Aerssens was clerk of the States General from 1584 to 1623.

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The 303 stars observed by Keyser and de Houtman found their way into 21 constellations, among which 12 were new: see Table 3.1. Of the remaining nine, eight constellations were already known by Ptolemy (see Table 3.2), whereas the ninth is Cruzeiro (De Cruzero), the Spanish or Southern Cross, for the first time separated from Centaurus and accurately depicted. Of the 303 stars in de Houtman’s catalogue, 111 were members of the 12 newly delineated constellations; the majority were, however, previously known or fainter members of the Ptolemaic constellations, including 56 stars in Argo Navis (comprising the modern constellations Table 3.1  New southern constellations following Plancius, Keyser, and de Houtman

De Houtman’s designation Den voghel Fenicx De Waterslang Den Dorado De Vlieghe De vlieghende Visch Den Camelion Den Zuyder Trianghel

English translation The Phoenix bird The water snake

De Paradijs Voghel Den Pauw Den Indiaen Den Reygher Den Indiaenschen Exster, op Indies Lang ghenaemt

The bird of paradise The peacock The Indian The heron The Indian magpie, named Lang in the Indies

The fly The flying fish The chamaeleon The southern triangle

Modern designation Phoenix Hydrus Dorado Musca Volans Chamaeleon Triangulum Australe Apus Pavo Indus Grus Tucana

Number of stars (de Houtman) 13 15 4 4 5 9 4 9 19 11 12 6

Table 3.2  Known southern constellations observed by Keyser and de Houtman De Houtman’s designation De Duyve met den Olijftack De Zuyder Kroon Het Zuyder Eynde van de Nyli Argo Navis Centaurus De Cruze(i)ro Lupus, den Wolf Het Outaer (Altaar) Den steert van Scorpio

English translation The dove with the olive branch The southern crown The southern end of the Nile The ship (Argo) Centaur The southern cross The wolf The altar

Modern designation Columba Corona Australis Eridanus (southern section) Carina, Puppis and Vela Centaur Crux Lupus Ara

The tail of the scorpion Scorpio (tail)

Number of stars (de Houtman) 11 16 7 56 48 5 29 12 9

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Carina, Puppis, and Vela), 48 in Centaurus, as well as stars in Ara, Corona Australis, Crux, Lupus, Columba,4 Scorpius, and southern Eridanus, which de Houtman called ‘den Nyli’, that is, the Nile (Ridpath, 2018).

6 Keyser or de Houtman? Following the earliest depictions of the new constellations on the globes of Plancius and Hondius of 1597/8–1601, adjustments based on de Houtman’s updated observations and calculations soon found their way onto next-generation globes, such as Blaeu’s Celestial Globe of 1603 (Dekker, 1987). The latter saw the light of day prior to the publication of de Houtman’s catalogue and approximately at the same time as the German astronomer Johann(es) Bayer’s (1572–1625) Uranometria Omnium Asterismorum (Uranometry—celestial cartography—of all the asterisms; Augsburg, September 1603). Bayer’s 49th map in his Uranometria star atlas (Fig. 3.6) shows all 12 new constellations. In addition,

Fig. 3.6  49th map from Johann Bayer’s Uranometria, showing the new southern constellations. (© Linda Hall Library; reproduced with permission)

 De Houtman referred to this constellation as ‘De Duyve met den Olijftak’ (the dove with the olive branch). 4

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His map of Eridanus shows the continuation beyond the last of Ptolemy’s stars to α Eridani; it also gives some stars in Phoenix and Doradus; that of Canis Major gives Columba, “recentioribus Columba”; Argo shows some stars in Volans; Centaurus includes Crux as a figure, and Triangulum Australe; Ara shows some stars in Triangulum, Grus, and Pavo; Piscis Austrinus includes stars in Grus. (Knobel, 1917a: 414).

Bayer’s accompanying text clarifies that the stars included in this 49th map were observed, in part, by Amerigo Vespucci (1451–1512), Andrea Corsali (b. 1487), and Pedro de Medina (1493–1567; de Grijs, 2020), but that their positions were derived by the “most learned” seaman Petrus Theodorus, that is, by Keyser. Corsali, in particular, deserves more than a cursory mention here, given that the Italian explorer was the first European to describe, identify and record the five stars of Crux, the “marveylous crosse” in 1516: “The crosse is so fayre and bewtiful that none other heavenly signe may be compared to it” (Power, 2018; Fig. 3.7). Blaeu was, however, clearly enamoured by de Houtman’s work. In the text accompanying his Celestial Globe he wrote, In the section of the heavens which borders the South Pole, F. H. [Frederick de Houtman], then on the island of Sumatra, measured many stars, and formed thirteen [sic] constellations of them. (van der Aa, 1867: 1331, own translation).

… while on his globe we read, in Latin, We have added more than 300 stars to the South – and the for us always hidden – Pole. Their distances from the stars determined and known by Tycho [Brahe], were measured by F.H. [Frederick de Houtman] who separated them into constellations, of which we have traced all positions on this globe back to the year 1640. (van der Aa, 1867: 1331, own translation from Dutch).

Fig. 3.7  Andrea Corsali’s original depiction of the Southern Cross. (© State Library of New South Wales; reproduced with permission)

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The provenance of the constellations on Blaeu’s Celestial Globe of 1603 has been the subject of debate since its inception. Whereas Blaeu credited de Houtman as his source, Merula stated in his Cosmographia Generalis (1605) that all observations of the “longitudes, latitudes, declinations, etc.” were obtained by Petrus Theodorus (Keyser). On the other hand, the German lawyer Julius Schiller (ca. 1580–1627) published a star atlas, Coelum Stellatum Christianum (Augsburg, 1627), in which he followed Blaeu and noted that his constellations are found on globes by “Petrus Plancius, or Petrus Karif, Jansonius (Blaeu) and [de] Houtman, etc.” (Knobel, 1917a: 415). Also in 1627, Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) released a newly edited version of Brahe’s tables as part of his Rudolphine Tables, to which he appended two additional catalogues with stars belonging to the Secunda classis and Tertia classis (second and third class, respectively): The third class of fixed stars[:] comprising twelve celestial images, which can not be seen at all in our moderate northern zone. In his Uranometria Joh. Bayer reports that these have been observed by Amerigo Vespucci, Andreas Corsali and Pedro de Medina, the first among Europeans, and declares that they were for the first time corrected to astronomical standard by Pieter Dicksz. [Keyser]. Jacobus Bartsch from Lausitz, a diligent young man, famous for some time now for his great merits concerning the celestial globe, assembled these same [constellations] into numbers and a map from the last tables and manuscripts of Johann Bayer himself (a splendid little collection of Christian constellations extracted from the Uranographia of Schiller, the publication of which is forthcoming in accordance with the last will of the author); and he has promised that he will subsequently publish the most perfect maps, by producing a one-and-a-half foot globe with the ancient images, as more conform with the version of Tycho. (Verbunt & van Gent, 2011: 2, my emphasis).

Finally, Edward Sherburne (1618–1702), the English poet, published an astronomical appendix associated with his translation of the poem The Sphere of Marcus Manilius (1675), stating that the constellations discussed in that poem were: … first found out and denominated by some eminent navigators sayling beyond the line, as particularly by Americus Vespuccius, Andreas Corsalius, Petrus [de] Medina, but principally by Fredericus [de] Houthman, who, during his abode in the island of Sumatra, made exact observations of them, being by Petrus Theodorus [Keyser] and Jacobus Bartschius reduced into order. (Knobel, 1917a: 415, my emphasis).

Nevertheless, de Houtman’s purported accomplishments were soon recognised more widely. As a case in point, Benjamin Apthorp Gould (1824–1896) included de Houtman’s stars in his Uranometria Argentina of 1879 (Knobel, 1917a), the leading star atlas of the day. François Valentijn (1666–1727), best known for his seminal work Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën (‘Old and New East India,’ 1724), highlighted the astronomer’s achievements: He has made several fine astronomical observations [while imprisoned] and discovered a number of hitherto unknown stars, which he subsequently also distributed in print. (Valentijn, 1724: 172–174, own translation).

Verbunt and van Gent (2011) similarly concluded that de Houtman had made highly accurate measurements. However, among his approximate contemporaries, one high-profile natural philosopher was less enamoured by de Houtman’s

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accomplishments. Edmond Halley (1656–1742) compiled his own southern star catalogue from St Helena in 1676–1677, and commented scathingly on de Houtman’s earlier work: Then there is a rumour that a certain Dutchman Frederick [de] Houtman has made an effort on these stars on the island of Sumatra, and that Willem Blaeu [used] his observations to correct the celestial globe which he [Blaeu] published. Which instruments he used is not known to me, but from a comparison made of his globe with our catalogue, it is sufficiently and abundantly clear that this observer was little practised in this arena. (Halley, 1679; translation: Verbunt & van Gent, 2011: 11).

Of course, Halley’s instrumentation was far superior to that used by de Houtman. The former had access to a state-of-the-art astronomical sextant with telescopic sights, which had been made specifically for his observations in St Helena, probably by the Ordnance Office (Cook, 1998: 38). On the balance of all available evidence, and following more recent quantitative analyses, it appears that de Houtman’s alleged contributions to the delineation of 12 new southern constellations—and by extension to improved navigation practices at sea—cannot be simply dismissed. He was clearly an educated man, well versed in mathematics and astronomy, and he had numerous opportunities to make careful astronomical observations. The star catalogue resulting from his first two voyages to the East was most probably a result of the combined efforts of Keyser and de Houtman, whereas Plancius likely also played a significant role in the definition of the new constellations. Much of the controversy surrounding de Houtman’s astronomical credentials is likely driven by his failure to credit Keyser’s contributions following the latter’s untimely death. Acknowledgement  In recognition that this contribution will form part of a volume published in celebration of Wayne Orchiston’s 80th birthday, this appears an opportune place to acknowledge Wayne’s encouragement to explore a range of history of astronomy aspects in more detail than I had initially planned to do. This led directly to my deep engagement with research into the history of science as an additional professional focus area.

References ab Utrecht Dresselhuis, J. (1841). Nog iets over Frederik de Houtman. In Vaderlandsche letteroefeningen (pp. 529–535). Blundeville, T. (1636). A plaine and full description of Petrus Plancius, his universall Mappe (7th ed.). Richard Bishop. Bodel Nijenhuis, J. T. (1831). Over het leven en de letterkundige verdiensten van Frederick de Houtman. In Nieuwe werken van de Maatschappij der Nederlandsche Letterkunde te Leiden (Vol. III). Luchtmans. Cook, A. (1998). Edmond Halley, charting the heavens and the seas. Clarendon Press. de Grijs, R. (2017). Time and time again: Determination of longitude at sea in the 17th century. Institute of Physics Publishing. de Grijs, R. (2020). European longitude prizes. I. Longitude determination in the Spanish Empire. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 23, 465–494.

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de Grijs, R. (2021). European longitude prizes. II. Astronomy, religion and engineering solutions in the Dutch Republic. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 24, 405–439. de Grijs, R., & Jacob, A. (2021a). William Dawes: Practical astronomy on the ‘First Fleet’ from England to Australia. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 24, 7–40. de Grijs, R., & Jacob, A. (2021b). Sydney’s scientific beginnings: William Dawes’ observatories in context. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 24, 41–76. de Houtman, F. (1601). Cort verhael vant gene wedervaren is Frederick de Houtman tot Atchein int eylandt Sumatra in den tijdt van ses ende twintich maenden die hy aldaer gevanghen is gheweest (Brief account of the experiences of Frederick de Houtman in Aceh during the 26 months of his captivity). Gouda, G.B. van Goor Zonen (printed 1880). de Houtman, F. (1603). Spraeck ende Woordboeck in de Maleysche en Madagaskarsche talen met vele Arabische ende Turksche woorden: inhoudende twaelf tsamensprekinghe in de Maleysche ende drie in de Madagaskarsche spraken met allerhande woorden ende namen, ghestelt naar ordre van den A.  B. C. alles int Nederduytsch verduytst. Noch syn hier bygevoeght de Declinatiën van vele vaste sterren, staende omtrent den Zuydpool voor desen tydt nooyt ghesien, sonderling nut voor de ghene die de landen van Oost-Indiën besoecken: ende niet min vermakelick voor alle curieuse liefhebbers van vreemdicheydt. Alles ghesteld, gheobserveert ende beschreeven door Frederik de Houtman van Gouda. Jan Evertsz. Cloppenburch. de Houtman, F. (1673–1680). Dictionarium ofte Woord- en Spraeckboeck, in de Duytsche en Maleysche tale, met verscheyde ‘t samen-spreeckingen in ‘t Duytsch en Maleytsch, aangaende de schipvaert en allerleye Koopmanschap. Paulus Matthysz. de Waard, C. (1912). Keyser (Pieter Dircksz.). In Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek (Vol. 2). Sijthoff. Dekker, E. (1987). Early exploration of the southern celestial sky. Annals of Science, 44, 439–470. Gould, B. A. (1879). Uranometria Argentina: Brightness and position of every fixed star, down to the seventh magnitude, within one hundred degrees of the South Pole. Resultados del Observatorio Nacional Argentino, 1, 1–387. Gray, H. (2019). Spice at any price. The life and times of Frederick de Houtman, 1571–1627. Westralian Books. Halley, E. (1679). Catalogus Stellarum Australium. Thomas James and R. Harford. Hidayat, B. (2000). Under a tropical sky: A history of astronomy in Indonesia. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 3, 45–58. Knobel, E. B. (1917a). On Frederick de Houtman’s catalogue of southern stars, and the origin of the southern constellations. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 77, 414–432. Knobel, E. B. (1917b). Note on the paper ‘On Frederick de Houtman’s catalogue of stars’. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 77, 580. Merula, P. (1605). Cosmographiae generalis. Ex Offic. Plant. Metius, A. (1621). Fondamentale ende grondelycke onderwysinghe van de Sterrekonst …. Moll, G. (1825). Verhandeling over eenige vroegere zeetogten der Nederlanders. Johannes van der Hey en Zoon. Orchiston, W. (2017). Studying the history of Indonesian astronomy: Future prospects and possibilities. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 20, 145–154. Power, J. (2018, December 6). State Library providing explorers with a navigational guide South. Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/national/oldest-­european-­map-­ of-­southern-­cross-­acquired-­by-­state-­library-­providing-­explorers-­with-­a-­navigational-­guide-­ south-­20181205-­p50kdc.html. Accessed 19 Nov 2021. Ridpath, I. (2018). Star tales. Lutterworth Press. http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/startales1c. html#houtman. Accessed 18 Nov 2021. Schilder, G., & van Egmond, M. (2007). 44. Commercial cartography and map production in the low countries, 1500–ca.1672. In D.  Woodward (Ed.), History of cartography (Vol. 3, pp. 1384–1432). University of Chicago Press.

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Stein, J. W. J. A. (1917). De eerste catalogus van Zuidelijke sterren van Frederick de Houtman en de waarnemingen van Pieter Dircks Keyzer. Studiën, tijdschrift voor godsdienst, wetenschap en letteren, 88, 36. Tichelaar, T. (n.d.). Frederick Pietersz. (de) Houtman. http://tacotichelaar.nl/wordpress/nl/ vereenigde-­oostindische-­compagnie/frederick-­pietersz-­de-­houtman/. Accessed 18 Nov 2021. van Berkel, K. (1998). Citaten uit het boek der natuur. Bert Bakker. https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/ berk003cita01_01/colofon.php. Accessed 29 May 2020. van der Aa, A. J. (1867). Frederik de Houtman. Biographisch woordenboek der Nederlanden, 8, Part 2, 1330–1332. https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/aa__001biog10_01/aa__001biog10_01_0894. php. Accessed 18 Nov 2021. van der Krogt, P. (1993). Globi Neerlandici: The production of globes in the low countries. HES Publishers. van der Sijs, N. (2000). Wie komt daar aan op die olifant? Een zestiende-eeuws taalgidsje voor Nederland en Indië, inclusief het verhaal van de avontuurlijke gevangenschap van Frederik de Houtman in Indië. L.J. Veen. van Linschoten, J. H. (1599). Navigatio ac itinerarium Johannis Hugonis Linscotani in Orientalem sive Lusitanorum Indiam. Alberti Henrici. Imp. Authoris/Cornelii Nicolai. https://nla.gov. au:443/tarkine/nla.obj-­231197956. Accessed 18 Nov 2021. Van Lohuizen, J. (1966). Houtman, Frederik de (1571–1627). In Australian dictionary of biography (Vol. 1). National Centre of Biography/Australian National University. https://adb.anu.edu. au/biography/houtman-­frederik-­de-­2201/text2845. Accessed 18 Nov 2021. Verbunt, F., & van Gent, R. H. (2011). Early star catalogues of the southern sky. De Houtman, Kepler (second and third classes), and Halley. Astronomy and Astrophysics, 530, A93.

Chapter 4

The Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations: A Scientific, Technical, Political, Social, and Cultural Adventure Kenneth I. Kellermann

The probability of success is difficult to estimate, but if we never search, the chance of success is zero. Cocconi and Morrison (1959)

1 Introduction and Disclaimer I have only made one SETI investigation in my career. That was a short observation more than half a century ago to look for the notch in the spectrum of the unusual radio source PKS 1934–63 of the type predicted by Nicolai Kardashev (1964). It was unsuccessful, and I buried the results in a few sentences in a scientific publication that primarily discussed the astrophysics of PKS 1934–63 (Kellermann, 1966). This was the first mention of a modern search for extraterrestrial intelligence in a peer reviewed scientific publication (see the list of radio SETI searches at https:// technosearch.seti.org/). Discouraged by my lack of success, I have not spent any more time or effort in searching for other intelligent civilizations, although I note that in spite of the enormous growth in the number of serious people involved in SETI, in the increase in technical capability, and the hundreds of subsequent investigations, no one has had more success than my modest 1964 search. My interest in SETI, however, has continued unabated. Over the past half century, I have participated in many SETI conferences and workshops, and was privileged to know and learn from nearly all of the early SETI pioneers.

K. I. Kellermann (*) National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Gullberg, P. Robertson (eds.), Essays on Astronomical History and Heritage, Historical & Cultural Astronomy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29493-8_4

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2 Background It has now been more than 60 years since Frank Drake’s pioneering Project Ozma and the first modern attempt to detect radio signals from an extraterrestrial intelligent civilization. Since that time, the size of radio telescopes used for SETI has increased from 25 m to the order of 100 m, system temperatures have decreased by more than an order of magnitude, and the number of simultaneous frequency channels searched has increased from one to about ten billion. But sadly, the number of successful detections remains unchanged – zero. Drake’s choice of 21 cm for Project Ozma was based only on the availability of a 21 cm receiver and feed that was being built in Green Bank for HI observations, specifically an attempt to detect Zeeman splitting of the 21 cm hyperfine structure line (Drake, 1961, 1979, 1986). While the receiver was being built, Cornell physicists Giuseppi Cocconi and Philip Morrison published their famous paper in Nature, calling attention to the possibility of communicating with an advanced extraterrestrial civilization. Cocconi and Morrison (1959) argued that the 21 cm line was the optimum place to look because hydrogen is the most common element in the Universe, and any extraterrestrial would recognize 1420 MHz as a special frequency for interstellar communications. Perhaps this would make sense if all the extraterrestrials were theoreticians, but if they were radio astronomers, they would understand that 1420 MHz is the worst frequency to use, partly because of the radiation and absorption at this frequency from Galactic hydrogen and also because any intelligent civilization would protect 1420  MHz for radio astronomy. Just as here on Earth, surely the Galactic Telecommunications Union would prohibit any radio transmissions in a band around 1420 MHz. Following the discovery of the interstellar 18 cm OH lines in 1963 by Weinreb et  al. (1963), Barney Oliver (see Fig.  4.1) and others argued that the so-called ‘water-hole’ between 18 and 21 cm (H + OH = H2O) was the obvious place that an Fig. 4.1  Barney Oliver, Hewlett Packard Vice President for Research, early SETI pioneer, originator of the ‘water-­ hole’ concept, and leader of the 1971 Project Cyclops summer study

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extraterrestrial water-based civilization would transmit, just as traditional water-­ holes were the place for neighbors to meet. HI and OH were the only two spectral lines known at the time in the radio spectrum, and the region between 1.4 and 1.7 GHz is in the quietest part of the microwave spectrum. So there were scientific, technical, and philosophical arguments that the frequency range from 1.4 to 1.7 GHz was the optimum place for SETI searches (Oliver & Billingham, 1973). However, Charles Townes (1983; Schwartz & Townes, 1961), the co-inventor of laser, suggested that instead of looking in the radio spectrum, we should look instead for infrared beacons from powerful lasers which would allow more highly focused signals and mitigate against needing to correct for Doppler shifts due to the unknown relative motion of the Earth and alien planet. Later, Paul Horowitz at Harvard initiated an optical SETI search (Howard et al., 2004). Freeman Dyson (1960) has suggested that instead of looking for electromagnetic transmissions, we look for signs of alien engineering artifacts, now referred to as technosignatures, such as infrared radiation from their technological waste. Jay Pasachoff and Marc Kutner (1979) pointed out the advantage of using neutrinos for interstellar communications, as, unlike radio or light waves, neutrinos pass through the Galaxy without attenuation. Unfortunately, they also pass through our detectors without detection. Harris (1986) has suggested that the matter–antimatter annihilation in alien spacecraft propulsion systems could produce observable gamma rays. Ron Bracewell (1960) made the innovative suggestion that alien civilizations will send self-replicating probes to other solar systems rather than signaling from their home planet, thus facilitating practical two-way communication without the long time delay that would be involved in communicating between stellar systems. Harvard astronomers Lingam and Loeb (2017) have suggested that fast radio bursts (FRBs) may be beams used to power alien intergalactic light sails. In his highly publicized book, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life beyond Earth, Avi Loeb (2021) has suggested that the interstellar asteroid Oumuamua is an alien artifact. Recently, Michael Hippke (2021) has proposed that future searches should target quantum communications due to its advantage over what he calls classical communications. I am not aware that anyone has yet suggested using gravity waves to search for extraterrestrials, but they will. While most searches by Western investigators have looked for narrow band signals, the early SETI studies in the USSR concentrated their efforts on looking for broad-band pulses (Troitsky et al., 1973, 1979; Gindilis et al., 1979). To discriminate against terrestrial interference, some of these experiments used spaced antennas to search for dispersed signals resulting from propagation delays in the interstellar medium. One can only speculate on their reaction if they had had sufficient sensitivity to detect pulsars or FRBs. In a particularly bold experiment, Soviet radio astronomers attempted to locate a Bracewell-type probe at the Earth–Moon Lagrangian points using a powerful 9.3 MHz radar facility in Gorky (Gindilis & Gurvits, 2019). The plethora of new ideas about searching for extraterrestrials has changed rapidly, with new concepts popping up on a time scale of a decade or less, yet we continue to speculate how civilizations far advanced by hundreds or thousands of years

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or more from our own will attempt to communicate. It is sobering to reflect on how traditional radio astronomy has changed since project Ozma 60  years ago: we haven’t had a very good record in predicting new astrophysical phenomena. Quasars, pulsars, FRBs, interstellar masers, Giant Molecular Clouds, superluminal (faster-­ than-­light) motion, the cosmic microwave background, and dark matter were all discovered during the past century – all unpredicted and discovered by accident as a direct result of newly developed technology. Even close at home in the Solar System, radio bursts from the Sun and Jupiter, the greenhouse effect on Venus, and the rotation of Mercury were unknown until revealed by new radio technologies. At the same time, radio astronomy has gone from arcminute resolution to an unpredicted microarcsecond resolution. Why then do we think we can understand the technology, not to mention the sociology and motivation of civilizations many hundreds and thousands of years (or more) ahead of us? Although there had been a lot of discussion about where to search for extrasolar planets, surprisingly the first extrasolar planets were found, not around a solar-type star where SETI investigators were concentrating their efforts, but unexpectedly around a pulsar (Wolszcan & Frail, 1992) – although the Nobel Prize committee apparently didn’t appreciate the importance of this discovery. One argument in favor of continuing to concentrate on radio searches is that radio transmission was the first technology to develop on Earth that was capable of interstellar communication. So even a very advanced civilization might recognize radio transmissions as the best way to communicate with our more primitive civilization, assuming that their technology developed along the same lines as ours. However, as Townes (1983) pointed out, if lasers had been invented before vacuum tubes and radio technology, our history of SETI on Earth might well have developed along different lines. Perhaps the most ambitious attempt to understand the nature of advanced alien civilizations was the classical paper by Nickolai Kardashev (1964). Extrapolating from our past like most SETI researchers, Kardashev implicitly assumed that alien societies would continue to advance their technological development. He recognized three levels of achievement that alien societies might reach. • Type I civilizations like our own are able to harness energy available from their sun, as well as geothermal and tectonic energy and consume energy at a rate of about 4 × 1012 Watts • Type II civilizations have harnessed the power of their sun, and consume about 4 × 1026 Watts • Type III civilizations have controlled the power of their galaxy at a level about 4 × 1037 Watts. Although Kardashev considered highly advanced civilizations with resources up to 1025 times more advanced than our own, he implicitly assumed that radio transmissions would remain the optimum method of interstellar communication. He specifically drew attention to the peaked spectrum radio sources CTA 21 and CTA 102 (Kellermann et al., 1962) which he noted had spectral energy distributions close to

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what he predicted was the spectral distribution that would be used by alien transmissions to optimize the information rate.

3 SETI Conferences, Meetings, and Workshops Surely no other scientific topic devoid of any positive results has been the subject of more meetings and conferences than SETI. Shortly after Project Ozma, Frank Drake and NRAO Director Otto Struve convened a small conference in Green Bank to consider the following questions: (a) What are the conditions under which intelligent radio transmissions are likely to be observable? (b) Is it worthwhile to observe with existing equipment, or are prospects for success too small to be of interest? (c) What observations are needed to make negative results interesting? Sixty years later, these same questions still form the basis of SETI research and conferences. Only about ten people attended the 1961 by-invitation-only conference. To organize the discussion, Drake devised his now famous Drake equation (see Fig. 4.2). At the time, many of the parameters were unknown. Today we have a much better idea of the likelihood that stars will contain a planetary system, that some of the planets will be Earth-like, and that some will lie in the Goldilocks zone – not too hot and not too cold but at a temperature that could support life. The big uncertainty 60 years ago was, and continues to be, L in Drake’s equation – what is the lifetime of intelligent technological civilizations? Do they go on to develop forever? Or, as debated especially during Cold War times, will civilizations destroy themselves by nuclear war? Or will civilizations perish when they overuse their natural resources? Today, a pessimist might speculate that the human race will be decimated by a global pandemic scale disease. Reportedly, in 1950 when discussing UFOs and considering the probability that there are many extraterrestrial intelligent civilizations in the Galaxy, Enrico Fermi famously asked, “Where is everybody?” Generations of SETI scientists have contemplated what has become known as the ‘Fermi Paradox’. Stephen Webb (2015) has written a provocative book with 75 possible explanations, but as our understanding about the formation of extrasolar planetary systems and the existence of Earth-­ like planets increases, speculations have become more focused around the value of L. As Carl Sagan kept reminding us, however, we must not forget Martin Rees’ caution that, “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” (Oliver & Billingham, 1973; p. 3). Twenty-five years after the Green Bank meeting, the Ozma participants as well as other SETI researchers gathered in Green Bank to review progress and discuss strategy (Kellermann & Seielstad, 1986). The next Green Bank SETI meeting on the fiftieth anniversary of Projet Ozma paid more attention to the social, moral, legal, and religious impact of success, as well as the implications of failure (see https://

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Fig. 4.2  Frank Drake (right) and the author taken in July 2019 during an astrobiology conference. The setting is the lounge where Drake first presented his 1961 Drake equation, shown on the memorial plaque in the background

library.nrao.edu/public/misc/videos/seti1.html for video recordings of the SETI@50 workshop). Probably the first large meeting to discuss how to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligent civilizations was organized by Yuri Parijiskii and others in Byurakan in Soviet Armenia in 1964 (Tovmasyan, 1964). Like SETI meetings held over the next half century, the participants debated the multiplicity of inhabited worlds, the possible levels of development obtained by alien civilizations, the optimum techniques for establishing communication, how to distinguish RFI from legitimate signals, as well as the logistics of establishing a common language for communication. In 1971 the US and Soviet Academies of Sciences jointly organized the first ever international conference devoted to the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life. Also held in Byurakan at the invitation of Viktor Ambartsumian, the conference was attended by a broad spectrum of scientists, historians, and engineers who debated related issues of anthropology, language, world history, the formation of planetary systems, the origins of life, as well as the technical issues that constrain interstellar communications (Ambartsumian, 1972; Sagan, 1973). Unsurprisingly, the conference participants endorsed the importance of SETI research and the need to initiate searches, which could be modest at the start but, they suggested, might ultimately become comparable to the level of funding devoted to space and nuclear research. At this meeting, a small group including Drake, Kardashev, Iosif Shklovsky

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and Carl Sagan, inspired by the plentiful supply of Armenian cognac, agreed that before we can communicate with extraterrestrials we need to find them, so they changed the name of the field from CETI (Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence) to SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), the name which rapidly became part of the professional, political, and popular lexicon. US and Soviet SETI researchers continued to meet on decade time scales with a 1981 conference in Tallinn, Estonia (Sullivan III, 1982) and a 1991 conference in Santa Cruz, California (Shostak, 1993) just before the collapse of the Soviet Union. SETI achieved a new level of recognition by the international community in 1979 when the International Astronomical Union convened a joint session on SETI at its 1979 General Assembly held in Montreal, Canada. Unlike the previous (and mostly subsequent) SETI conferences, the IAU Joint Discussion had, for the first time, a broad participation of scientists with no previous involvement in SETI.

4 False Alarms During the first 10 or 15 years after Project Ozma, there were a number of investigations to search for radio signals from an extraterrestrial civilization, almost exclusively in the US and USSR. Several investigators were allowed to use the Green Bank 140 and 300 foot telescopes for low key SETI programs, with the proviso that any results be published in the normal scientific literature and not given undue publicity (e.g., Verschuur, 1973; Zuckerman & Tarter, 1980; Tarter, 1980). Although there were no confirmed detections of any extraterrestrial civilization, that hasn’t constrained the community from writing hundreds of thoughtful original papers, reviews, and popular articles. A few investigations stand out for their apparent, albeit temporary and false, indications of a real SETI signal.

4.1 Project Ozma When Frank Drake first turned the 85 foot telescope toward Epsilon Eridani, there was a strong pulsating signal, every 8 seconds, so loud it drove the chart recorder needle off scale and Drake could hear it on a speaker. Just what might be expected from an extraterrestrial transmission. According to Drake (1986), “It lasted a few minutes and then disappeared.” We were “dumbfounded. Could it be this easy? … We were so surprised and unprepared for it, we didn’t know what to do ... We didn’t have the presence of mind to steer the telescope off the source, which of course is what we should have done.” They then set up a separate receiver with a horn looking at the sky, and when the pulsed signal returned 10 days later, they saw it on the antenna pointed toward Epsilon Eridani and also with equal intensity from the reference horn. Almost surely, it was an aircraft radar coming in the antenna sidelobes and not from Epsilon Eridani.

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Fig. 4.3  The famous ‘Wow’ signal recorded by Jerry Ehman. The x-axis represents a subset of the 50 frequency channels and the y-axis represents 12-second time samples of the receiver output. Numbers greater than 9 are represented by letters. (After Ehman, 2007)

4.2 The Wow Signal The Ohio State radio telescope, known as ‘The Big Ear’, was a fixed meridian transit parabolic reflector. When John Kraus (1977) finished surveying the sky for radio galaxies and quasars, there was little left to do in radio astronomy. For nearly the next 25 years Kraus used the Big Ear to survey the sky looking for signals from an extraterrestrial civilization. To automate the process, the receiver output was digitized and displayed on a simple time vs frequency plot with limited dynamic range. On 15 August 1977, there was a brief burst of noise covering only a single 10 kHz frequency channel and lasting about a minute, the time taken by a source to pass through the stationary antenna beam. Although it wasn’t seen in second antenna beams that swept past the same position a few minutes later, Jerry Ehman impulsively scribbled, “Wow” on the chart record (see Fig.  4.3) (Ehman, 2007; Grey, 2012). Being a transit instrument, they could not track the source to see if the noise burst would repeat, and it did not appear again on subsequent nights. Most likely it was the kind of interference that radio astronomers deal with all the time, but John Kraus was a good showman, and generated a lot of publicity that inspired numerous follow-up observations, none of which showed any evidence for any repetition of the “Wow” signal.

4.3 CTA 102 The radio sources CTA 21 and CTA 102 were the first peaked spectrum sources known (Kellermann et al., 1962). From synchrotron radiation theory, Shklovsky and Kardashev knew that if the peaked spectra were due to synchrotron self-absorption,

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the sources had to be very small (Slysh, 1963; Williams, 1963), of the order of 0.01 arcsecond. Along with Parkes 1934–63, Kardashev (1964) considered these peaked spectrum sources as likely candidates for an artificial extraterrestrial transmission. Shklovsky sent his student, Gennady Sholomitsky, to Crimea to use a classified military space tracking antenna to study CTA 21 and CTA 102 (Fig. 4.4). Whether Shklovsky (Fig. 4.5), a strong advocate for SETI, was motivated by his interest in confirming the validity of synchrotron theory, or by detecting evidence for an alien civilization, was known only to Shklovsky. Sholomitsky (1965) observed both CTA 21 and CTA 102, along with many other radio sources, and reported a remarkable variability of about 30% in CTA 102 on a timescale of only a few weeks (see Fig. 4.6). If the flux density of a source varies significantly over a period of say 100 days, then it cannot be more than about 100 light-days across; otherwise signals from different parts of the source would arrive at different times and the variations would be smeared out. But, CTA 102 turned out to have a redshift close to one. At this distance, a 100 light-day source would be much smaller than 0.01 arcseconds and have a brightness temperature far in excess of the inverse Compton limit, and so would quickly self-destruct. Sholomitsky, Shklovsky and Kardashev well understood the problem. On 12 April 1965, a TASS reporter overheard Shklovsky and Kardashev fancifully speculating that the radio emission from CTA 102 might come from an extraterrestrial

Fig. 4.4  Antenna of the Soviet Deep Space Communication and Control Center in Yevpatoria Crimea, used by Gennady Sholomitsky to observe flux density variations in CTA 102. (Courtesy: Space Agency of Ukraine)

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Fig. 4.5  Iosif Shklovsky in 1968 at the Fourth Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by the author taken at Shklovsky’s request to show his Russian colleagues)

Fig. 4.6  Observed flux density relative to 3C 48 of CTA 21 (open circles) and CTA 102 (filled circles). The plot runs from late 1963 to April 1965. (Courtesy: Sholomitsky family)

civilization. The TASS ‘telegram’ reporting on the discovery by Soviet scientists of an artificial cosmic signal led to a press conference that was attended by Soviet as well as foreign media. When pressed, Kardashev continued to play with the assembled journalists and did not deny the possibility that CTA 102 was an extraterrestrial civilization. The press took it seriously, and the 14 April 1965 edition of Pravda reported that extraterrestrials were signaling the Earth. The startling news quickly

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spread throughout the Soviet Union and around the world, and included two front page stories and an editorial in the 13 April 1965 edition of the New York Times. When the Sydney Morning Herald picked up the report and wanted more information, they contacted the CSIRO Radiophysics Laboratory where I had just completed my study of PKS 1934–63, following up on Kardashev’s suggestion that sources like this might be from an extraterrestrial civilization. Being the local ‘SETI expert’, as none of my colleagues wanted anything to do with SETI, the reporter was referred to me. I explained the problem of understanding the rapid variability, and expressed doubts about the SETI interpretation. But when the reporter asked if he could send me his story to check for accuracy, I had to explain that I was leaving in a few days for Moscow. This was a long-planned trip connected with my return to the US from a postdoc in Australia. There was nothing that I could now add to convince the reporter that my trip was to learn about Russian radio astronomy programs and had nothing to do with SETI. The next day, the 18 April 1965 Sydney Morning Herald carried the story: SPACE MYSTERY FOR AUST. Scientists pick up signals. Australian Scientists have had mysterious radio signals from an unidentified body, billions of miles away in southern skies, under observation since 1962. This was revealed in Sydney this week following claims by Russian scientists. The Russians claimed that radio signals picked up from a stellar body code-named CTA 102 could be evidence of a super-civilization in outer space. … Dr. Kellermann will fly from Sydney to Moscow on Tuesday to “compare notes” with the Russians.

CTA 102 was further immortalized by the Byrds, a well-known rock group in their memorable recording (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OONsT-­z1hc8). We now know that CTA 102 is a typical AGN with a relativistic jet moving toward us at nearly the speed of light, which accounts for the apparent rapid time variations without the need to resort to extraterrestrials.

4.4 Pulsars As is well known, when Jocelyn Bell discovered a pulsating radio source with a 1.33 second repetition rate, Tony Hewish, her dissertation advisor, who was experienced in observational radio astronomy, immediately declared that it was man-­ made. Bell knew that the pulsating source appeared at the same sidereal time each day, and not at the same solar time and declared that, “Well, it may be man-made, but not Earth man made” (Bell Burnell, 1984). The Cambridge radio group apparently seriously considered whether or not these pulses might have originated from an extraterrestrial civilization, and even fancifully marked their chart recording LGM-1 for Little Green Men. The later suggestion that pulsars were navigational beacons to guide interstellar space craft was given great publicity by the US media.

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5 SETI Becomes Too Important to Leave to the Scientists Following the publicity surrounding Project Ozma, the highly publicized subsequent false alarms, and a vigorous promotional campaign by a core group of SETI scientists led by Carl Sagan, there was increasing discussion and concern about the moral, legal, ethical, economic, social, technical, medical, military and religious impact of a successful detection of signals from an extraterrestrial civilization, one that would be presumably more advanced than our own. Drake’s famous 1974 Arecibo transmission to M13 only added to the controversy, with claims that he was irresponsibly disclosing our presence to any alien civilization that might exist on a planet orbiting a star in M13, 21,000 light-years away. Apparently, it was time for the US government to step in. Government involvement in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence started with the summer study organized by NASA and led by Barney Oliver, then the Vice President of Hewlett Packard, and John Billingham, a medical doctor who headed the NASA Ames Committee on Interstellar Communication The goal of Project Cyclops, as it was known, was to design a radio telescope with at least a factor of 100 improvement in sensitivity over any existing telescope and that would be capable of meaningful search for alien radio transmissions. Oliver’s bold vision excited many radio astronomers, but the anticipated cost of more than $10 billion to build up to a thousand 100 m dishes (see Fig. 4.7) far exceeded any likely funding, and left a long lasting perception that a realistic search for alien radio signals would be prohibitively expensive. Perhaps not surprisingly, the NASA-sponsored group concluded that NASA should ‘establish the search for extraterrestrial intelligence as an ongoing part of the total NASA space program with its own funding and budget.’ The report went on to recommend that NASA should ‘establish an office of research and development in techniques for communication with extraterrestrial intelligence,’ and, ‘appoint a director and small initial staff.’ (Oliver & Billingham, 1973; p. 171). Billingham now had the blessing he needed to formulate a NASA SETI program. SETI had apparently become too important, or at least too visible, to leave it to the scientists. It appeared that SETI might involve real money, and the politicians began to get involved. In 1975, the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Space Science and its Applications requested the Library of Congress Science Policy Research Division to report on the ‘Possibility of Intelligent Life Elsewhere in the Universe.’ The report compiled by Marcia Smith (1975) was an authoritative account of SETI research primarily in the United States and in the Soviet Union. It served to legitimize a field that most scientists associated with UFOs and science fiction, and was a blueprint for future SETI research. But rather than open the door to new funding opportunities, it may have had the unexpected and unwanted effect of bringing SETI to the attention of Congress. Although there was no space component, starting with Project Cyclops, the US SETI effort was led for several decades by NASA, with no involvement from the

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Fig. 4.7  Artist’s conception of the thousand element Cyclops array of 100  m diameter dishes. (After Oliver & Billingham, 1973)

NSF, which normally funds all ground-based astronomy in the US. Encouraged by the House report, NASA initiated a series of workshops chaired by Phil Morrison. The workshop report on The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Morrison et al., 1977) laid out comprehensive plans for the US SETI program for the next decades that followed a set of four bold guidelines: 1. It is both timely and feasible to begin a serious search for extraterrestrial intelligence. 2. A significant SETI program with substantial potential secondary benefits can be undertaken with only modest resources. 3. Large systems of great capability can be built if needed. 4. SETI is intrinsically an international endeavor in which the United States can take a lead. Meanwhile, not to be outdone, following the 1971 US–USSR meeting in Byurakan, Soviet scientists met again in Gorky in 1972 to formulate their equally bold Research Program on the Problems of Communication with Extraterrestrial Signals that was approved in 1974 by the Board of the Scientific Council on Radio Astronomy of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The proposed Soviet program included searching nearby stars and galaxies, all-sky surveys over a wide range of radio and infrared wavelengths, finding evidence of Dyson spheres and Bracewell probes, as well as an

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ambitious program to build dedicated instruments both on the ground and in space to search for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations (CETI, 1974). However, aside from a few small investigations, there is no evidence that any of these ambitious programs were actually implemented. In 1982, the International Astronomical Union established a new Commission on Bioastronomy and SETI, thus recognizing SETI as a legitimate branch of astronomy, and not in the realm of science fiction or UFO studies. In the US, SETI research received a boost and endorsement of legitimacy from the National Academy of Sciences decadal reviews of astronomy (Greenstein, 1972; Field, 1982; Bahcall, 1991; McKee & Taylor, 2001). But the NAS reports stressed the need for a variety of approaches including increased support for individually led investigations, and cautioned against large expensive agency-led programs. With the 1975 Congressional report, the endorsement of the IAU and the NAS, NASA was ready to proceed with an ambitious SETI program (see e.g. Dick, 1993). However, in 1978, before the planned program could get off the ground, Senator William Proxmire from Wisconsin awarded his infamous Golden Fleece Award to the NASA SETI program claiming that NASA was “riding the wave of popular enthusiasm for Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and suggested that SETI should be “postponed for a few million light years” (Press Release, 16 February 1978). Three years later, Proxmire introduced an amendment to the FY 1982 NASA bill that eliminated any funding for SETI. Nevertheless, the NASA group was able to maintain a low level program under the Congressional radar, and with some quiet diplomacy from Carl Sagan, Proxmire ultimately dropped his opposition to SETI. NASA convened a second SETI Science Working Group under the leadership of Frank Drake. The Working Group report (Drake et al., 1984) presented a 14-point set of Conclusions and Recommendations confirming that the most logical approach to SETI was the microwave radio spectrum, that “NASA should remain at the focal point for a well-structured SETI program,” and “the search for extraterrestrial intelligence be supported and continued at a modest level as a long-term NASA research program.” The recommended modest level long-term program developed into the proposed 10 year $100 million Microwave Observing Project (MOP) that included both target searches as well as an all-sky survey program, largely disregarding the NAS cautions against large expensive programs. To address the growing tensions between the NASA Ames and the NASA JPL SETI groups, who had proposed a Targeted Search and a less sensitive but more inclusive Sky Survey program respectively, the MOP included the Solomon-like solution containing both the Ames Targeted Search and the JPL all Sky Survey programs. While the arguments in support of each program were couched in terms of optimum search strategy, the competition for project leadership did not go unnoticed. With no apparent Congressional opponents (Drake & Sobel, 1992) NASA developed their plan for the MOP that would be managed much in the manner as other NASA missions. Much of the next years was spent in developing the needed instrumentation in a field where the technology was developing so rapidly that by the time new instrumentation was designed, built, and tested, it was already obsolete. There

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was competition between Ames and JPL to develop the signal processing hardware known as the Multichannel Spectrum Analyzer (MCSA) at Ames and the Wide Band Spectrum Analyzer at JPL (see Dick, 1993 for a detailed history). The MOP, later renamed the High Resolution Microwave Survey (HRMS), became a formal NASA mission in 1990 with two project offices at JPL and Ames, a staff of more than 60 people, and a budget of $108 million. Although a lot of money had been spent building and testing instrumentation, there were few if any actual observing programs. However, by 1992, NASA was ready to begin their ambitious observing program with a planned simultaneous inauguration at Goldstone and at the Arecibo Observatory that was held on Columbus Day, 12 October 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s landing in the Bahama Islands (see Fig. 4.8). At this time, Columbus was still a national hero, although a few decades later he was vilified for tyrannizing the native population. The breakdown in the terrestrial communication link between Goldstone and Arecibo engineers who were hoping to communicate with alien civilizations was perhaps an omen of the serious setback that followed.

Fig. 4.8  Cover of brochure distributed to the Columbus Day 1992 participants of the joint Arecibo–Goldstone dedication of the Microwave Observing Project

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Normally a $10 million budget item in the $7 billion NASA budget would receive little scrutiny in Congress. Perhaps as a result of intense lobbying and the publicity generated by SETI leaders, the HRMS program came to the attention of Senator Richard Bryan from Nevada. Following an unsuccessful attempt to kill the program in the FY 1992 NASA budget, Bryan issued a press release on The Great Martian Chase, claiming: As of today millions have been spent and we have yet to bag a single little green fellow. Not a single Martian has said take me to your leader, and not a single flying saucer has applied for FAA approval (Press Release, 22 September 1993).

Although a few Senators from both parties spoke in favor of the SETI program, 2 days later Bryan’s late amendment to remove SETI from the NASA budget was passed by a voice vote in the Senate, effectively killing the NASA SETI program. At the time, NASA was still struggling with the embarrassment over the Hubble mirror as well as defending the controversial and expensive Space Station, and wasn’t going to make waves over this small SETI budget item that was not part of its mainstream program. An unanticipated consequence of the Senate action was that the NSF, also concerned about its broader program of supporting US science and not offending Congress, for the next decade also quietly refused to fund any proposal for SETI research. Nevertheless, even during this period of NSF withdrawal, SETI programs were quietly, although not secretly, pursued on the NSF-­ funded Green Bank 140 foot radio telescope. With little prospect for US government funding, the SETI Institute, which was established by Drake and Sagan, successfully initiated ‘Project Phoenix’ that rose from the ashes of the NASA HRMS. Exploiting the instrumentation that had been developed for the HRMS, Phoenix used the Green Bank, Arecibo, Parkes, and Nanҫay radio telescopes to investigate 800 nearby stars for signs of intelligent life. Meanwhile, the traditional JPL Sky Survey essentially died for lack of funding. With support from the Planetary Society and other private donors, SERENDIP (Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations) started modestly at the University California Hat Creek Observatory, and expanded to successfully run piggy-back for three decades with ever more sophisticated instrumentation on the world’s largest radio telescopes. SETI@home, organized by Dan Wertheimer at the University of California, Berkeley, used the screen-saver mode on millions of PCs in some 200 countries to search for signs of intelligence in data from radio telescopes, and was, perhaps, the most successful citizen science program ever established. Project META (Megachannel ExtraTerrestrial Assay) led by Harvard’s Paul Horowitz, surveyed the sky for 6 years around the 21  cm hydrogen line with very high spectral resolution. While finding what appeared to be a small number of statistically significant detections concentrated along the Galactic plane, none were confirmed by follow-up observations (Horowitz & Sagan, 1993). In 1997, the SETI Institute undertook a new planning study, and this time, unlike the NASA led studies of the 1970s and 1980s, the study was organized independent of any government involvement and included both engineers with a strong digital

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data processing background as well as SETI enthusiasts. Led by Ron Ekers, a respected Australian radio astronomer who later became President of the IAU, the study report, SETI 2020, reviewed the entire field and laid ambitious plans for continued SETI research (Ekers et  al., 2002). Interestingly, starting with Project Cyclops, SETI has been a strong driver for increased radio telescope sensitivity. Similarly, the 1971 US–USSR Byurakan meeting recommended building a “decimeter radio telescope with an effective area ≥1 km2” (Sagan, 1973; p. 356). One of the interesting outcomes of SETI 2020 was a design concept for a radio telescope with a collecting area of a million square meters that would impact the planning for the Square Kilometre Array by the international radio astronomy community with Ekers, then Jill Tarter later, serving as the first two chairs of the International SKA Steering Committee. SETI 2020 recommended a more modest short term goal of building an SKA prototype with a collecting area of 1 hectare (104 m2), dubbed the 1hT. Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, generously contributed more than $30 million to the design and construction of the 1hT, later named the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), the first major facility devoted to SETI. Unfortunately, the lengthy period of design and prototyping used up most of the available funds, so only some 42 of the planned 350 antenna elements were constructed. More recently, the billionaire Yuri Milner has funded the 10 year $100 million Breakthrough Listen project, which is conducting the most extensive and most sensitive searches using essentially all of the world’s most powerful radio telescopes. Although, like all the other SETI programs, Breakthrough Listen has not detected any signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, it has been enormously successful in raising broader awareness of SETI and bringing a new generation of students and scientists to the field.

6 Looking Ahead As Jill Tarter has often noted, it is hard to get funding for continued research on a project that has not had any success even after 60 years and hundreds of observations. She points out that we are looking for the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack, in this case the ‘cosmic-haystack’ with nine degrees of freedom (frequency, modulation, sensitivity, two polarizations, three directions, and time) (Tarter et al., 2010). At best we have only surveyed a small fraction of phase space, which Tarter has compared to using a glass of water to understand the content of all the water in the Earth’s oceans. Probably there is no other area of human inquiry where we know so little about how to look, where to look, what we are looking for, or even if there is anything out there to look for. Six decades of SETI research have perhaps raised more questions than given us answers. Why, until recently, has SETI been of interest primarily in the United States and in the former Soviet Union? What was special about these two super powers? Were Soviet and American scientists more concerned about our place in the Universe and the lifetime of intelligent societies than scientists from other countries?

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What is the best technique to detect evidence of extraterrestrial intelligent civilizations? Is the detection of artificially transmitted electromagnetic signals or subatomic particles the correct approach? Will the search for evidence of alien technological activity (technosignatures) such as Dyson spheres, or the search for biological activity (biosignatures) such as the detection of methane in stellar atmospheres be more successful? Or, should we be scanning the Solar System for Bracewell probes as the first evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence? Is the traditional strategy of looking at nearby stars (under the lamppost) the correct approach? Should we be looking nearby for Kardashev Type I civilizations, or for Type II and III civilizations in more distant stars or other galaxies? The answer depends on the SETI luminosity function. If there are a relatively large number of powerful sources, the strongest signals may come from distant stars or from other galaxies. On the other hand, if the SETI luminosity function is steep, the conventional strategy of looking at nearby stars will be most likely to lead to success. In this respect, it may be relevant to recall that the brightest radio sources in the sky are distant radio galaxies or quasars, while nearby, so-called, ‘normal’ galaxies are only weak radio emitters. What is the search optimum strategy? Large focused multi-person national or international teams, or small individual efforts? Where should the money go, to big programs or grants to individual researchers? What is the right balance between government and private funding? Historically, in almost every country, but especially in the US and the USSR, SETI research was supported either directly or indirectly through government funds. The privately funded Planetary Society, the SETI Institute with its many donors, Paul Allen, and Yuri Milner changed that. In the likely case that Breakthrough Listen finds no extraterrestrials after 10 years and $100 million, will there be an incentive (funding?) for further SETI research? Will the first detection come from a dedicated SETI investigation or will it be from some conventional astronomical research program? How will we distinguish between new physics from the work of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization? If past history is any guide, the answer will be ‘new physics.’ Or at least new phenomena. Will a radio amateur be the first to hear and decipher the first extraterrestrial signals, and not a radio astronomer? What are the implications of success? What will be the scientific, ethical, social, moral, political, legal and religious impact to society? Will it be all good? What are the dangers? How should we react to a successful SETI detection? Obvious, first confirm; keep it quiet until you are absolutely sure it isn’t interference, a hoax, or a newly discovered natural phenomena. What then? Whom do you trust? Do you tell no one and continue to observe and try to decipher the signals? Do you tell your government? For Americans, is it the President, the Secretary of State, or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Since this isn’t a national issue do you instead contact the UN? Or do you hold a press conference and tell everyone in the world? In 2010, A committee of the International Academy of Astronautics issued a Declaration of Principles Concerning the Conduct of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, urging public disclosure of any confirmed detection, including the UN

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and the IAU, and no transmission of a reply without international consultation (see https://www.seti.org/protocols-­eti-­signal-­detection). Noticeably, national governments were not included in the protocol. It is uncertain, however, how an individual researcher will behave in a real life situation. Will they follow the protocol, or will they follow their own self-interests? What are the implications of continued failure? Are we alone? Will failure to contact any intelligent extraterrestrial civilization imply that the quantity L in the Drake Equation is small? If so is this the result of global war, careless overuse of resources, global pandemic, an asteroid impact or some other global catastrophe that we haven’t yet thought of? Even cognizant of Cocconi and Morrison’s proclamation that, “the probability of success is difficult to estimate; but if we never search the chances of success are zero,” at what point will continued searches with existing technologies be fruitless? Should we transmit? If no one transmits, no one will receive. Is there a danger in transmitting? What if the first contact is from a Bracewell probe, which would mitigate the communication time gap resulting from the round trip propagation time to distant stars? Most SETI investigators, as well as the general public, probably accept that alien civilizations may not be humanoid, but implicitly assume that they are biological. Is it more likely the first alien signals will come from a machine, possibly a Bracewell probe with advanced Artificial Intelligence located within our Solar System? What if the transmission at the terrestrial end is also a machine and not a human? Will the extraterrestrial probe and the terrestrial counterpart have sufficiently mature Artificial Intelligence to develop a common language and exchange information about their respective histories, science, technology, medicine, economics, culture, and warfare? Will humans be involved? How far will Artificial Intelligence evolve beyond the level of Alexa, Cortina, Siri, Watson, and self-drive cars, all of which are developments of only the last decades? Will humans still exist when the first contact is made, and if they do, will the terrestrial machines share what they learn from their extraterrestrial counterparts with their human ancestors? Acknowledgements  Parts of this paper are based on Chapter 5 of Open Skies: The National Radio Astronomy Observatory and its Impact on US Radio Astronomy, 2020, K.I.  Kellermann, E.N. Bouton, and S.S. Brandt, Cham, Springer. I am indebted to Paul Horowitz, Ellen Bouton, Ron Enders, and Leonid Gurvits for help in improving the presentation.

References Ambartsumian, V. A. (1972). First Soviet–American conference on communication with extraterrestrial intelligence (CETI). Icarus, 16, 412–414. Bahcall, J. (Ed.). (1991). The decade of discovery in astronomy and astrophysics: Report of the radio astronomy panel (p. 62). National Academy Press. Bell Burnell, J. (1984). The discovery of pulsars. In K.  I. Kellermann & B.  Sheets (Eds.), Serendipitous discoveries in radio astronomy (pp.  160–170). Green Bank, National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

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Bracewell, R.  N. (1960). Communication from superior galactic communities. Nature, 186, 670–671. CETI. (1974). The CETI program. Soviet Astronomy, 18, 69–75 [Russian original: Astronomicheski Zhurnal, 51, 1125–1132]. Cocconi, G., & Morrison, P. (1959). Searching for interstellar communications. Nature, 184, 844–846. Dick, S. J. (1993). The search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the NASA HRMS: Historical perspectives. Space Science Reviews, 64, 93–139. Drake, F. D. (1961). Project Ozma. Physics Today, 14, 40–46. Drake, F. D. (1979). A reminiscence of Project Ozma. Cosmic Search, 1(1), 10–21. Drake, F.  D. (1986). The search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In K.  I. Kellermann & G. A. Seielstad (Eds.), Proceedings of the NRAO workshop on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Green Bank, National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Drake, F. D., & Sobel, D. (1992). Is anyone out there? The scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence (pp. 195–196). Delacorte Press. Drake, F. D., Wolfe, J. H., & Seeger, C. L. (Eds.). (1984). SETI science working group report, NASA technical paper 2244. Washington, NASA. Dyson, F. (1960). Search for artificial stellar sources of infrared radiation. Science, 131, 1667–1668. Ehman, J. (2007). The big ear Wow! signal. http://www.bigear.org/Wow30th/wow30th.htm Ekers, R. D., Cullers, D. K., Billingham, J., & Scheffer, L. K. (Eds.). (2002). SETI 2020: A roadmap for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. SETI Press. Field, G. (Ed.). (1982). Astronomy and astrophysics for the 1980s (pp.  150–151). National Academy Press. Gindilis, L. M., & Gurvits, L. I. (2019). SETI in Russia, USSR and the post-Soviet space: A century of research. Acta Astronautica, 162, 64–74. Gindilis, L. M., et al. (1979). Search for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations by the method of synchronous dispersion reception. Acta Astronautica, 6, 95–104. Greenstein, J.  L. (Ed.). (1972). Astronomy and astrophysics for the 1970s (Vol. 1). National Academy of Sciences. Grey, R.  H. (2012). The elusive wow: Searching for extraterrestrial intelligence. Palmer Square Press. Harris, M. J. (1986). On the detectability of antimatter propulsion spacecraft. Astrophysics and Space Science, 123, 297–303. Hippke, M. (2021). Searching for interstellar quantum communications. Astronomical Journal, 162, 1–14. Horowitz, P., & Sagan, C. (1993). Five years of Project META: An all-sky narrow-band radio search for extraterrestrial signals. Astrophysical Journal, 415, 218–235. Howard, A. W., et al. (2004). Search for nanosecond optical pulses from nearby solar-type stars. Astrophysical Journal, 613, 1270–1284. Kardashev, N.  S. (1964). Transmission of information by extraterrestrial civilizations. Soviet Astronomy-AJ, 8, 217–221. [Russian original: Astronomicheski Zhurnal, 41, 282–287. Kellermann, K. I. (1966). The radio source 1934–63. Australian Journal of Physics, 19, 195–207. Kellermann, K. I., & Seielstad, G. A. (Eds.). (1986). The search for extraterrestrial​l intelligence. Green Bank, NRAO. Kellermann, K. I., et al. (1962). A correlation between the spectra of non-thermal radio sources and their brightness temperature. Nature, 195, 692–693. Kraus, J. (1977). The Ohio Sky Survey and other radio surveys. Vistas in Astronomy, 20, 445–474. Lingam, M., & Loeb, A. (2017). Fast radio bursts from extragalactic light sails. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 837, L23–L27. Loeb, A. (2021). Extraterrestrial: The first sign of intelligent life beyond earth. John Murray. McKee, R., & Taylor, J. (Eds.). (2001). Astronomy and astrophysics for the new millennium (pp. 131–132). National Academy Press.

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Morrison, P., Billingham, J., & Wolfe, J. (Eds.). (1977). The search for extraterrestrial intelligence. NASA SP-419. NASA. Oliver, B.  M., & Billingham, J. (Eds.). (1973, Revised), Project cyclops: A design study for a system for detecting extraterrestrial intelligent life. NASA CR114445 [Originally published 1972, revised 1973, reprinted 1996 by the SETI League and the SETI Institute with additional material]. Pasachoff, J.  M., & Kutner, M.  L. (1979). Neutrinos for interstellar communication. Cosmic Search, 1(3), 2–8. Sagan, C. (Ed.). (1973). Communication with Extraterrestrial intelligence (CETI). MIT Press. Schwartz, R. N., & Townes, C. H. (1961). Interstellar and interplanetary communication by optical masers. Nature, 190, 205–208. Sholomitsky, G. B. (1965). Fluctuations in the 32.5-cm flux of CTA 102. Soviet Astronomy-AJ, 9, 516 [English translation from Astronomicheski Zhurnal, 42, 673]. Shostak, G. S. (1993). Third decennial US–USSR conference on SETI. Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Slysh, V. I. (1963). Angular size of radio stars. Nature, 9, 682. Smith, M. (1975). Possibility of intelligent life in the universe. Report prepared for the Committee on Science and Technology, US House of Representatives, Ninety-Fifth Congress, Washington, Government Printing Office [updated in 1977 to include new astrometric information and the status of the NASA SETI program]. Sullivan, W. T., III. (1982). SETI conference at Tallinn. Sky and Telescope, 63, 350–353. Tarter, J. C. (1980). A high sensitivity search for extraterrestrial intelligence at λ18 cm. Icarus, 42, 136–144. Tarter, J. C., et al. (2010). SETI turns 50: Five decades of progress in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In Proceedings of SPIE 7819, instruments, methods, and missions for astrobiology XIII (pp. 1–13–25). Tovmasyan, G. M. (Ed.). (1964). Extraterrestrial civilizations. English translation for NASA and the NSF from the Israel Program for Scientific Translation, no. 1823. US Dept of Commerce from Russian Original/Armenian Academy of Sciences Press. Townes, C. (1983). At what wavelengths should we search for signals from extraterrestrial intelligence? Publications of the National Academy of Sciences, 80, 1147–1151. Troitsky, V. S., et al. (1973). Search of sporadic radio emission from space at centimeter and decimeter wavelengths. Radiofizica, 16, 323–341 (in Russian) [English translation: Radiophysics and Quantum Electronics, 16, 239–252]. Troitsky, V. S., et al. (1979). Search for radio emissions from extraterrestrial civilizations. Acta Astronautica, 6, 81–94. Verschuur, G. (1973). A search for narrow band 21-cm wavelength signals from ten nearby stars. Icarus, 19, 329–340. Webb, S. (2015). If the universe is teeming with aliens …where is everybody? Springer. Weinreb, S., et  al. (1963). Radio observations of OH in the interstellar medium. Nature, 200, 829–831. Williams, P.  J. S. (1963). Absorption in radio sources of high brightness temperature. Nature, 200, 56–57. Wolszcan, A., & Frail, D. (1992). A planetary system around the millisecond pulsar PSR1257+12. Nature, 355, 135–147. Zuckerman, B., & Tarter, J. (1980). Microwave searches in the USA and Canada. In M. D. Papagiannis (Ed.), Strategies for the search for life in the universe (pp. 81–92). Reidel.

Chapter 5

What’s in a Name? That Which We Call Anders’ Earthrise, as ‘Pasteur T,’ Didn’t Sound as Sweet (Adventures in Lunar Exploration and Nomenclature on the Fiftieth Anniversary of Apollo 8) William Sheehan

1  Introduction One of the many things that Wayne Orchiston has done to advance the history of astronomy is promote the work of the International Astronomical Union, and so this essay—written in December 2018 on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the circumlunar flight of Apollo 8—seems appropriate to include in Wayne’s Festschrift volume, since it has a strong International Astronomical Union connection. As a member of the IAU’s Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN), I was one of five (a quorum) who met on September 18, 2018, at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, to discuss various nomenclatural proposals for Solar System bodies including the Moon. The most interesting and controversial proposals asked for a reconsideration of three crater names proposed by the Apollo 8 astronauts 50 years earlier but never approved. These craters, located in the eastern limb area of the far side of the Moon, had been unofficially called ‘Borman,’ ‘Lovell,’ and ‘Anders’ on the Apollo 8 flight plan. They were important navigationally, as they indicated the point where the astronauts, having circled back around the far side of the Moon, would regain contact with the Earth, an obviously critical point in the mission. They were also in the vicinity of where a decision would have to be made to fire the Service Propulsion Engine (SPS) to initiate the return to the Earth. When proposed, the names had been officially regarded by NASA as The original version of this chapter was revised. The correction to this chapter is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29493-8_34 W. Sheehan (*) Independent Scholar, Flagstaff, AZ, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023, Corrected Publication 2023 S. Gullberg, P. Robertson (eds.), Essays on Astronomical History and Heritage, Historical & Cultural Astronomy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29493-8_5

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‘operational and informal,’ and not intended to be submitted to the IAU for consideration.1 However, with time that decision failed to sit well with some of the astronauts and became entangled in what came to be seen as some rather high-handed and politically motivated decisions taken by the IAU (Figs. 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3).

Fig. 5.1  Apollo 8 crew (from left): James A. Lovell, Jr, William A. Anders and Frank F. Borman II. (Credit: NASA)

 Musgrove, R.G., 1971. Lunar Photographs from Apollos 8, 10, and 11. Washington, D.C., NASA.

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Fig. 5.2  Apollo 8 flight map. The proposed trajectory of the spacecraft is shown by the red line, and navigational names of craters have been indicated by Bill Anders. (Credit: William A. Anders)

Fig. 5.3  A close-up section of the flight plan for Apollo 8, with provisional names for craters entered by Bill Anders. (Credit: William A. Anders)

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The sometimes vexed and tendentious history of lunar nomenclature has been discussed in detail in an excellent monograph by Ewen Whitaker.2 For our purposes, we need only consider the history from the point where the Soviets, with Luna 3 in October 1959, obtained the first images of the far side of the Moon. As great as this achievement was, the images were actually of very poor quality—yet they allowed the Soviets to lay claim to priority for choosing the names of many far side features. Whitaker recounts: Those of us in the lunar photography/cartography/nomenclature field … were not quite prepared to deal … with the new curve thrown at us by Soviet astronomers, who had brought along to the 1967 [IAU General Assembly meeting in Prague] a number of newly printed volumes of a book, Atlas Obratnoi Storony Luny, Chast 2 [Atlas of the Far Side of the Moon, Part 2]. This was based on the earlier Luna 3 images plus those taken by the Zond 3 spacecraft, which had photographed most of that portion of the Moon’s far side not covered by Luna 3. The accompanying map and list of new names caused not a little consternation at the time, not only from the fait accompli nature of the operation, but also from the makeup of the list, about 45% of which was of Russian names!3

To add to the confusion, by then much better images from the American Lunar Orbiters were becoming widely available. These provided coverage of the entire lunar surface, at high resolution, with the exception of a small area of Luna Incognita near the south and southwest limbs which was poorly photographed by the Orbiter missions and not finally covered in spacecraft imagery until the Clementine mission in 1994 (Figs. 5.4, 5.5 and 5.6).

Fig. 5.4  Luna 3; full-scale mock-up at the Memorial Museum of Astronautics in Moscow. (Credit: Wikipedia Commons)  Whitaker, E.A., 1999. Mapping and Naming the Moon: a history of lunar cartography and nomenclature. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press. 3  Whitaker, Mapping and Naming the Moon, p. 176. 2

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Fig. 5.5  Far side image from Luna 3, October 4, 1959. Mare Crisium appears at the far left of the image, and Mare Moscoviense (upper right) and the crater Tsiolkovskiy (lower right). (Credit: USSR)

In order to deal with the plethora of far side features being revealed, a subgroup of the IAU’s Nomenclature and Cartography Committee was formed, with an American, Donald Menzel, an astrophysicist by training, named to the chair. The other members were Andrei Mihailov, Marcel Minnaert, and Audouin Dollfus, none of whom was directly involved in the work of lunar topography. The most knowledgeable person about lunar topography at the time, Whitaker, would later see this as an unforgivable mistake.4 The problem was largely with Menzel himself. He had a flair for flouting established rules and supervised—if that is the word—an era of nomenclatural chaos that ended only with his death in 1976. By then, the lunar nomenclature group had been renamed the Task Group for Lunar Nomenclature (TGLN) and be kept under tighter reins by the Working Group for Planetary System

 Whitaker, Mapping and Naming the Moon, p. 178.

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Fig. 5.6  Apollo 8 navigator James Lovell, observing through the spacecraft sextant during the Apollo 8 flight to the Moon. (Credit: William A. Anders)

Nomenclature (WGPSN), established in 1973 with Peter Millman of Canada serving as first president. With space probes beginning to explore the other planets in detail, the purpose of the WGSPN was to coordinate the work of several task groups, including the TGLN, and to prevent a repeat of the Mars situation where 134 out of 189 Martian crater names duplicated those already being used on the Moon. To return to the informal names used by the crew of Apollo 8, before they could even be considered, the IAU stepped in at its General Assembly meeting in Brighton in August 1970 and rendered the whole question moot. It was the first meeting held after the successful Apollo 8 circumlunar mission, the Apollo 10 circumlunar mission, and the Apollo 11 and 12 lunar landings. Despite the fact that Menzel, the chair of Commission 17 (lunar nomenclature), was an American, the Soviets made out far better than the Americans at the meeting. The IAU adopted the full list of more than 500 far side craters the Soviets proposed, including features such as those now named Gagarin and Korolev which had never been photographed by Soviet probes. According to Smithsonian Institution geologist Bob Craddock, who provided a summary of the issues involved in these decisions to the WGPSN in March 2018, politics had been very much involved (and remember, this was still during the Cold War): The argument was that because the Soviets had been the first to photograph a portion of the far side, they were allowed to suggest names for everything, regardless of the quality of their data, and despite the fact that our understanding of the far side landscape was based mainly on American Lunar Orbiter and Apollo photographs.

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This was pure propaganda! The Soviets had lost the Space Race, but they still laid claims to the Moon anyway. In yet another unprecedented propaganda stunt, the Soviets also proposed naming six prominent features after still living people related to their space program. The IAU allowed this [despite a 1961 rule that had explicitly insisted that craters only be named for deceased scientists], but as a concession the Americans were allowed to name features after six living people related to their space program too. Three small craters (