Big and Bright: A History of the McDonald ObservatoryUniversity of Texas Press, 13 sept. 2013 - 224 pages By day, every year over 40,000 visitors pour in. Across the Rio Grande, a hundred miles away, Mexican mountaineers use the white domes as landmarks. By night, perched almost 7,000 feet above the sleeping, earthbound world, astronomers probe the secrets of the night sky. This is the University of Texas McDonald Observatory, one of the world's largest university-operated astronomical installations. Big and Bright: A History of the McDonald Observatory is the story of a remarkable collaboration between two major universities, one a prestigious private school, the other a growing southwestern state institution. The University of Chicago had astronomers, but its Yerkes Observatory was aging and underfunded; the University of Texas had money for an observatory but no working astronomer to staff it. Out of their mutual need, they formed a thirty-year compact for a joint venture. Unusual in its day, the Yerkes-McDonald connection presaged the future. In this arrangement, one can see some of the beginnings of today's consortium "big science." Now the McDonald Observatory's early history can be put in proper perspective. Blessed with a gifted and driving founding director, the world's (then) second-largest telescope, and an isolation that permitted it to be virtually the only major astronomical observatory that continued operations throughout World War II, the staff of McDonald Observatory helped lay the foundations of modern astrophysics during the 1940s. For over a decade after the war, a lonely mountaintop in West Texas was the mecca that drew nearly all the most important astronomers from all over the world. Based on personal reminiscences and archival material, as well as published historical sources, Big and Bright is one of the few histories of a major observatory, unique in its focus on the human side of the story. |
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... Observatory David S. Evans, J. Derral Mulholland. BIG AND BRIGHT A History of the McDonald Observatory by David S. Evans and J. Derral Mulholland University of Texas Press, Austin 'vi Copyright © 1986 by the University of Texas Press All.
... Austin, Texas 78713-7819 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Evans, David Stanley. DEDICATED TO the achievements of our predecessors and our colleagues,. Big and bright. (History of science series ; no. 4) Includes index ...
... Derral Mulholland. DEDICATED TO the achievements of our predecessors and our colleagues, and especially to FRANK N. EDMONDS, JR., who led the way in Austin l-'H r—rO r-rr-r Ab) sopoygnuruaumr-r Contents Preface . The Tourist's.
... Austin summer. Our thanks are also due and rendered to James N. Douglas, director of the University of Texas Radio Astronomy Observatory; Paul A. Vanden Bout, head of the University of Texas Millimeter Wave Observatory; and Frank N ...
... Austin, 450 miles to the east. Neither do they glimpse the complex task of allocation of observing time, with planners playing musical telescopes with the fifty or so astronomers who wish to use them. Transport arrangements must get ...
Table des matières
3 | |
12 | |
The TexasChicago Agreement | 21 |
Choosing and Developing the Site | 33 |
Triumphs and Transitions | 106 |
Interregnum | 141 |
Epilogue | 153 |
APPENDIX A The Last Will and Testament | 165 |
The Telescopes of the University | 171 |
80 | 177 |
Autres éditions - Tout afficher
Big and Bright: A History of the McDonald Observatory David S. Evans,John Derral Mulholland Affichage d'extraits - 1986 |
Big and Bright: A History of the McDonald Observatory David Stanley Evans,John Derral Mulholland Aucun aperçu disponible - 1986 |