Astronomy+Story+Concert

Astronomer Story Concert:

Background and introduction: This story biographies three pivotal scientists in the development of our understanding of what stars are. This is being used to teach about the form and content of stars and how luminosity, temperature and color relate to the age and lifecycle of stars. Before we understood this; stars were catalogued and classified and spectral analysis was used as part of this process. At the time spectral analysis it was sort of like the genome project of the 1990s, many scientists were working on it, and there were mysteries still to be solved. The question of what stars were made of captivated even the general public. Hertzsprung and Russell met in 1910-(publishing the diagram in 1913) in order to set a standard for the process of classifying stars; they created a diagram that allowed for the advancement of our understanding and was basically a classification scheme for stars; the same as had been established a century earlier for plants and other species. This writing is also about scientific process which works by creating a community of people with a high degree of scientific literacy who do research using a standard set of principles; then publishing results in journals where they will feed into and influence the body of knowledge known as scientific theory. Synthesis is what it is called when you make something new. This is the story of scientific process, scientific literacy and what a scientist is.

Arthur Stanley Eddington –English-1882-1944 Ejnar Hertzsprung-Danish-1873-1967 Henry Norris Russell-American 1877-1957

Music; Joni Mitchell, instrumental version.

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 * //Read here://**

//“We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year-old carbon and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.”// -Joni Mitchell, 1969

The night sky in the 1800s was bright. There was little light pollution-in our night sky the stars fade to grey. There had never been a world war and scientists were developing new ways to measure and record and study our world…there was still so much to learn. There was a sense that technology would relieve hardship and no knowledge yet of the consequences of the industrial revolution. The world was innocent...We did not yet know how far away the sun was…or what stars were made of. The world showed a lot of promise. Henry Norris Russell was 12 years old in 1889 when the first train arrived in Oyster Bay, Long Island where his family lived. It was in the expansive library where he had taught himself to read using a picture dictionary at the age of 3. He was a boy who could not sit still; he was sensitive and precocious, he either needed to be in constant movement or to have his mind completely engaged. His robust pastor father was concerned that Henry was not very physical or into sports, Henry identified more with his mother who was a mathematician; although her main work was as a pastor’s wife who spent her time helping their parishioners. When Henry’s father wanted to take him shooting or for strenuous treks Henry only wanted to spend time studying nature and in the library reading about what he had observed. When Henry was 5 years old he and his family watched the transit of Venus across the sun. The transit of Venus is among the rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena. Because of the orbital periods of Earth and Venus; A pair of transits separated by 8 years takes over a hundred years to repeat. When Henry and his family watched the transit in December 1882 they knew that they were witnessing something that would not be experienced again in their lifetimes. We have the opportunity to do this in June of this year, 2012, the first half of the current pair of transits took place in June of 2004. Henry’s family knew the importance of never to looking directly at the sun; special glasses or a pinhole device can be used to observe the shadow of the sun’s reflection. After witnessing this event; Henry became fascinated by the night sky, watching the stars and learning everything about them. Henry had a difficult relationship with his father and questioned his faith, he was the only one of three sons not to attend the local school, which was paid for by the parishioners. He was sent to prep school in Princeton where he lived with a maiden aunt when he was 12. By the time Henry went to Princeton University the world of astronomy was engaged in figuring out stars. In 1927 he wrote, “I would rather analyze (stellar) spectra than do crossword puzzles or do almost anything else.” Later in life (In 1934) he wrote that “heaven is not a place but a state.” He expressed trust in a creator who could make such a beautiful world. Meanwhile, in Denmark, another boy was gazing at the stars. Half a world away, Ejnar Hertzsprung was watching the transit of Venus with his family. Ejnar’s father had wanted to be an astronomer, he loved to study star charts and on his frequent night hikes with his son, he would name every constellation. He worked as an insurance executive, but encouraged his son’s scientific interests so long as they were practical. Ejnar was 11 years old when they watched the transit in Copenhagen. Ejnar studied Chemistry, but he didn’t really like being a chemist, he so loved the stars found their gravity irresistible. He worked as a chemist; but volunteered all his time at the observatory. He published a paper in his thirties proposing a relationship between the spectrum and luminosity, his background as a chemist allowed him a perspective that was unique. When he finally changed careers in 1909 he was 36 years old. He was hired to lecture in astronomy and the director wrote of him, “Ejnar thinks all the time, I…only occasionally.” Both of these men were studying spectral analysis at a time when many people were. Henrietta Leavitt was an influence on Ejnar when she had been hired to count images on plates, she made groundbreaking contributions to the theory while laboring at a low wage as a “human computer” but as a woman she was not recognized, encouraged or appreciated. Ejnar was influenced by her and her insights contributed to his work. In 1910, after years of working and reading and publishing papers in scientific journals these two men met and together created the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram which every New York student studies today in order to help them understand stars. We study this diagram further our own understanding, but when it was first published, it was the first time that all of the information that was being collected was put into a picture, this allowed scientists to synthesize more theories and led to the understanding of stars that we have today.


 * //This is a natural break in the story, if it feels too long stop here; the rest can be done at a different time.//**

In the year that Henry and Ejnar were watching the transit of Venus; a boy was born in England who would use their work. Arthur Stanley Eddington was inspired after seeing Russell present his diagram to the Royal Astronomy society in 1912 to develop ideas on how stars work. The major problem of stellar theory, the source of a star’s energy was still unsolved. Arthur Eddington was born to Quaker parents and his father, a schoolmaster, died in the typhoid epidemic when he was 2 years old, he was raised by a single mother who struggled to make ends meet. She could not afford to send him to He was a gifted mathematician and studied math and physics on a scholarship, and he became an astrophysicist. Whether it was his understanding of what it felt like to be poor or his pacifist religion he had an open mind that many fellow scientists did not. He and Russell were both influenced by George Darwin, the astronomer son of Charles Darwin. Eddington succeeded George as secretary of the Royal Astronomy Society at Cambridge. During World War 1; many scientists wanted to ban contributions from scientists working in Germany and Austria because of their conduct during the war, Eddington argued that the advancement of science was more important, and he was one of the first to see Albert Einstien’s theories of relativity, which he promoted as an important scientific breakthrough. Eddington put together an expedition to the Island of Principe off the coast of Africa to observe the solar eclipse of 29 May 1919 to make the first empirical test of [|Einstein] ’s theory: the measurement of the deflection of light by the sun's gravitational field. In fact, it was an argument for the indispensability of Eddington’s expertise in this test that allowed him to escape prison during the war, because he was a conscientious objector who refused the draft and arrested, but then released. Eddington was able to popularize and translate difficult science in ways that everyone was able to understand.

Eddington wrote a clever parody of the classic poem [|//The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam//] recounting his 1919 solar eclipse experiment, including the verse: Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate

 One thing at least is certain, LIGHT has WEIGHT

 One thing is certain, and the rest debate -

 Light-rays, when near the Sun, DO NOT GO STRAIGHT. Eddington’s contribution to science was mainly that he was able to write in a way that most people could access and understand. He made science accessible to many people and raised the scientific literacy of his readers. He wrote in his popular book //The Nature of the Physical World// that “The stuff of the world is mind-stuff.”

Postscript: The mind-stuff of the world is, of course, something more general than our individual conscious minds…. The mind-stuff is not spread in space and time; these are part of the cyclic scheme ultimately derived out of it…. It is necessary to keep reminding ourselves that all knowledge of our environment from which the world of physics is constructed, has entered in the form of messages transmitted along the nerves to the seat of consciousness…. Consciousness is not sharply defined, but fades into subconsciousness; and beyond that we must postulate something indefinite but yet continuous with our mental nature…. It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character. But no one can deny that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience, and all else is remote inference." —Eddington, //The Nature of the Physical World//, 276-81.

References:

Biographical information from [] Retrieved 2/28/2012

[page&q&f=false|http://books.google.com/books?id=hAE_6QX28qUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA184#v=one page&q&f=false] Retrieved 2\20\2012

Summary:

Story concert about their boyhoods and how they manage to connect to work together through the scientific community-scientific journals. All astronomers, all using the scientific process which has to do with publication and a process of set standards of research, how science builds a body of knowledge.