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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... later, but first we should take a closer look at William Johnson McDonald (1844—1926). On examination, he turns out to have been a shrewd and successful businessman, hardly of infirm mind. CHAPTER 2 The Benefactor In the late summer of ...
... . There, for three months, young William's mother, Leila, would come to read to him. He was attended constantly, by a male nurse at night and a female nurse by day. They later had tales to tell about how 8 The Benefactor.
... later had tales to tell about how his mind would wander a little. At the time, however, Leila McDonald said that his mind was “as clear as a bell,”7 and his attending physicians thought him mentally alert to the end. William Johnson ...
... later in our story. Frost's effectiveness was waning, because of advancing blindness, but his memory was good and his head clear. He was later to make an all-important decision that would affect the McDonald Observatory's entire future ...
... later?” [In fact, history now credits Pierre-Jules-César Janssen and Englishman Joseph Norman Lockyer with near-simultaneous independent discoveries] Frost's letter does not seem to have been used directly in the defense, but Benedict ...
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 |