He first teamed up with Jason Nassau: Gingerich (1985), p. 64.
the two students set up a special camera: Ibid., p. 68.
provided the breakthrough: See Morgan, Sharpless, and Osterbrock (1952).
used cotton balls to depict: “Spiral Arms of the Galaxy” (1952).
“Astronomers are usually of a quiet and introspective disposition”: Struve (1953), p. 277.
clapping of hands: Gingerich (1985), p. 69.
“finally found its solution”: Ibid.
Within two years, the spiraling segments were confirmed: Van de Hulst, Muller, and Oort (1954).
our galaxy has two dominant arms: Churchwell et al. (2009), p. 228.
CHAPTER 12. THE WOMAN WHO CHASED GALAXIES
he could see out to distances of a few hundreds of millions of light-years: Hubble (1936), p. 517.
“There, we measure shadows”: Hubble (1982), p. 202.
“are enormous systems”: Hubble (1936), p. 543.
a choice that hadn’t been available to her in New Zealand: Biographical details on Beatrice Tinsley are largely provided by Eisberg (2001).
“one of the boldest graduate thesis projects”: Kennicutt (1999), p. 1165.
constructed her model based on the best theoretical and observational evidence: Tinsley (1968).
“Brian Tinsley’s clever wife”: Eisberg (2001), p. 268.
What they saw matched Tinsley’s prediction: Butcher and Oemler (1978).
“changed the course of cosmological studies”: Faber (1981), p. 110.
No longer able to use her right hand: Larson and Stryker (1982), p. 165.
was published the following November: Tinsley (1981).
CHAPTER 13. STUFF OF THE HEAVENS
In 2006 the probe returned to Earth’s vicinity: Leary (2006).
“The significance of this discovery”: Brownlee (2009).
“we are made of starstuff”: Sagan (1980), p. 190.
“we would never know how to study”: Hearnshaw (2014), p. 1.
“But people would say we must have gone mad”: “Some Scientific Centres” (1902), p. 587.
he had turned his spectroscope to the heavens: Kirchhoff (1862), pp. 20–21.
Within a few years, other astronomers: Hearnshaw (2014), pp. 36–37, 41–44.
“It is remarkable that the elements”: Huggins and Miller (1864), p. 434.
In 1955, physicist Charles H. Townes . . . was invited to address an international symposium: Bartusiak (1993), pp. 169–70.
would be “hopeless”: Ibid., p. 173.
they found hydroxyl radicals screaming out: Weinreb et al. (1963).
recorded the radio cries of both ammonia and water: Cheung et al. (1968) and Cheung et al. (1969).
handed out cases of liquor: Bartusiak (1993b), p. 175.
forms for every 30 million molecules of hydrogen: Ibid., p. 174.
Hydrogen peroxide, the hair-bleaching agent, was uncovered: Bergman et al. (2011).
CHAPTER 14. RECIPE FOR THE STARS
This chapter was first published in The Sciences, Bartusiak (1993a): Marcia Bartusiak, “The Stuff of Stars.” The Sciences, September/October 1993a, pp. 34–39. It draws on a number of sources, including Haramundanis (1984), DeVorkin (1989), DeVorkin and Kanat (1983a,b), Kidwell (1990), Payne (1925), and an interview of Jesse Greenstein by Spencer R. Weart on April 7, 1977, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, Maryland, www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/4643-1.
CHAPTER 15. FIND A WAY AROUND IT
This chapter was first published in Smithsonian magazine, Bartusiak (2005b). Copyright 2005 Smithsonian Institution. Reprinted with permission from Smithsonian Enterprises. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any medium is strictly prohibited without permission from Smithsonian Institution.
One of the most important discoveries: Burbidge et al. (1957).
B2FH delivered the proof: Bartusiak (2004), pp. 366–68.
beheld them with vivid clarity: Burbidge (1994), p. 3.
astronomy could be a career: Ibid., p. 4.
using a telescope so antiquated: Ibid., p. 7.
she fought for—and won—access: Ibid., p. 18.
“Thanks to her influence”: http://womensmuseumca.org/hall-of-fame/margaret-burbidge. Accessed September 22, 2017.
“If you meet with a blockage”: Burbidge (1994), p. 9.
a feat listed in the Guinness Book of Records: http://cwp.library.ucla.edu/Phase2/Burbidge,[email protected]. Accessed September 22, 2017.
first female director of the famed Royal Greenwich Observatory: Burbidge (1994), p. 30.
has not always embraced the majority opinion: Email interview with Burbidge, July 18, 2005.
“continually surprised by the almost religious fervor”: Burbidge (1994), p. 26.
more attracted to the notion . . . that matter was created in successive epochs: Ibid., p. 35.
“To ride with the telescope”: Ibid., p. 25.
CHAPTER 16. DARK MATTERS
They serve the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search: Cho (2013).
dense object that he called a “neutron star”: Baade and Zwicky (1934a), p. 263.
“It is difficult to understand”: Zwicky (1937b), p. 234.
referred to this invisible substance as dunkle Materie: Zwicky (1933), p. 125.
largely owing to Vera Rubin: Bartusiak (1990), pp. 91–92.
To their surprise, they revealed that the stars and gas: Rubin, Ford, and Thonnard (1980).
Modeling this effect, theorists figured: Ostriker and Peebles (1973).
by 1978 Rubin and her team had measured more than two hundred: Bartusiak (1990), p. 94.
aimed the Hubble Space Telescope at massive galaxy clusters: Coe et al. (2010).
there is five times as much dark matter: According to Bennett et al. (2013), p. 46, normal matter composes 4.628 percent of the universe’s total mass-energy, while the dark matter density is 24.02 percent. Other measurements have slightly different values but are in the same range.
CHAPTER 17. COSMIC FUNHOUSE
astronomers from Great Britain, Russia, and Spain announced in 2009: Belokurov et al. (2009).
racing toward one another at around 300,000 miles . . . per hour: Irwin et al. (2015).
thrust Einstein into the public eye: “Lights All Askew in the Heavens” (1919).
Eddington considered the possibility: Eddington (1920), pp. 133–35.
“as to make it impossible to detect it”: Ibid., p. 134.
its light would spread out to form a ring: Chwolson (1924).
Einstein was already aware: Renn, Sauer, and Stachel (1997).
“Some time ago, [Rudi] W. Mandl”; “a most curious effect”; “no hope”: Einstein (1936).
“little value, but it makes the poor guy”: Renn, Sauer, and Stachel (1997), p. 186.
“Extragalactic nebulae [galaxies] offer”; “see [other] nebulae”: Zwicky (1937a).
confirmed that the cozy pair were quasars: Walsh, Carswell, and Weymann (1979).
The lens turned out to be a giant elliptical: Young et al. (1980).
“The vistas we uncover with this new gravitational telescope”: Gates (2009), p. 5.
CHAPTER 18. RIVERS OF GALAXIES
dubbed this gargantuan structure “Laniakea”: Tully et al. (2014), p. 73.
named it (rather uninspiredly) the “Local Group”: Hubble (1982), p. 125.
“remarkable collection”: Herschel (1785), pp. 255–56.
“metagalactic systems” or “metagalactic clouds”: See Holmberg (1937) and Shapley (1933).
To him, galactic groupings stopped at clusters: Hubble (1982), p. 187.
de Vaucouleurs had been an expert observer of Mars: Interview of Gerard de Vaucouleurs by Alan Lightman on November 7, 1988, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, Maryland, www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/33930.
He called it the �
��Local Supergalaxy”: de Vaucouleurs (1953).
“It was considered as sheer speculation”: Bartusiak (1986), p. 170.
“All of a sudden”: Biviano (2000), p. 9.
Abell . . . pointed out other potential superclusters: Abell (1961).
“striking confirmation”: Ibid., p. 610.
as if they are on the surfaces of huge, nested bubbles: De Lapparent, Geller, and Huchra (1986).
CHAPTER 19. THE BIG DIPPER IS CRYING
“All we see is a blob in the sky”: Siegel (2014).
a high-tech wonder: Details on the array can be found at http://www.telescopearray.org.
Did this ionization originate from the Earth’s crust: Carlson (2013), p. 10.
built a sensitive electroscope: Ibid., pp. 10–11.
started taking measurements aboard balloons: Ibid., p. 11.
“radiation coming from above”: Ibid., p. 12, and Walter (2012), p. 25.
“the whole of the penetrating radiation”: Otis and Millikan (1924), p. 778.
convinced of their extraterrestrial nature: Carlson (2013), p. 13.
“found wild rays more powerful”: “Millikan Rays” (1925).
he called them “cosmic rays”: De Maria and Russo (1989), p. 214.
“signals broadcasted throughout the heavens”: Millikan (1928), pp. 281, 282–83.
the national press regularly covered this scientific tussle: Carlson (2013), p. 14.
The particle model finally won in 1932: Compton (1933).
could also be atomic nuclei or electrons: Jones (2013), p. 17.
physicists came to discover new and bizarre elementary particles: Walter (2012), pp. 38–39.
rays came from spectacular stellar blasts: Baade and Zwicky (1934a).
CHAPTER 20. EINSTEIN’S SYMPHONY
a gravitational wave passed through the Earth on September 14, 2015: Abbott et al. (2016).
He predicted that a pair of masses: Einstein (1916).
He claimed to have observed such ringing: Weber (1969).
Weiss wrote a landmark report: Weiss (1972).
construct a pair of large detectors with arms two-and-a-half-miles . . . long: Bartusiak (2017), pp. 141–43.
physics community quickly protested: Ibid., p. 147.
The wave first arrived at Livingston: Details of the first detection in Bartusiak (2017), pp. 177–204.
assumed it was a “blind injection”: Interview with Marco Drago, January 15, 2016.
Could it have been a hacker?: Interview with Gabriela Gonzalez, January 8, 2016.
One of the holes weighed thirty-six solar masses: Abbott et al. (2016).
“the warped side of the universe”: Interview with Kip Thorne, January 8, 2016.
It was almost guaranteed: All the succeeding descriptions of the various gravitational-wave events come from Bartusiak (2017), pp. 226–39.
“That is the prize”: LIGO news conference, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, Massachusetts, February 11, 2016.
CHAPTER 21. UNDERGROUND ASTRONOMY
Deep beneath the South Pole, thousands of detectors: See https://icecube.wisc.edu.
The ultrahigh energy of this special set of particles: Aartsen et al. (2015).
Chadwick was soon sent to an internment camp: Details on Chadwick’s and Ellis’s wartime experiences can be found in Sutton (1992), p. 14, and Hutchison, Gray, and Massey (1981), pp. 201–2.
“Dear radioactive ladies and gentlemen”: Sutton (1992), p. 7.
“desperate”: Ibid., p. 21.
Chadwick discovered the first known electrically chargeless particle: Chadwick (1932).
Fermi dubbed Pauli’s hypothetical particle the neutrino: Fermi (1934), p. 161.
“the little one who was not there”: Ne’eman and Kirsh (1986), p. 71.
to stop one in its tracks: Ibid., p. 73.
set up a detector outside a South Carolina nuclear power plant: Ibid., p. 73.
“All good things come to the man”: Enz (2002), p. 488.
Raymond Davis set up the first neutrino observatory: See https://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/raydavis/research.htm.
CHAPTER 22. EAVESDROPPING ON THE UNIVERSE
the VLA, for Very Large Array: Further details on its operation can be found at http://www.vla.nrao.edu.
“by far the most sensitive such radio telescope”: Finley (2012).
assigned to investigate long-radio-wave static: Friis (1965), p. 841.
“Jansky’s merry-go-round”: See http://www.nrao.edu/whatisra/hist_jansky.shtml.
Jansky at last established in 1932 that the disruptive 20-megahertz static: Jansky (1933).
dubbed the signal his “star noise”: Friis (1965), p. 842.
not the “result of some form of intelligence”: “New Radio Waves Traced” (1933).
NBC’s public affairs–oriented Blue Network broadcast the signal: Kellerman and Sheets (1983), p. 47.
“sounded like steam escaping”: “Radio Waves Heard from Remote Space” (1933).
“some sort of thermal agitation”: Jansky (1935), p. 1162.
violent streams of electrons spiraling about: Kellerman and Sheets (1983), p. 55.
infant field at last took off: Reich and Wielebinski (2002).
Long burdened with a chronic kidney ailment: Kellerman and Sheets (1983), p. 40.
In his last experiments, he was trying out a newfangled gadget: Friis (1965), p. 842.
CHAPTER 23. THE ONCE AND FUTURE QUASAR
announced the discovery of the most distant quasar: Bañados et al. (2017).
recognized the first quasar: Bartusiak (1986), p. 151.
Ryle reported that he counted more far-off cosmic radio sources: Ryle (1958).
narrow down the location of a particularly strong source, labeled 3C 48: Matthews and Sandage (1963), p. 30–31.
“I took a spectrum the next night”: Thorne (1994), p. 335.
couldn’t even find evidence that hydrogen: Hawking and Israel (1989), p. 243.
On the fifth day of that month: Bartusiak (1986), p. 151.
3C 273 was rushing away from us: Schmidt (1963).
made the cover of Time magazine: Time, March 11, 1966.
“The insult was not that they radiate”: Bartusiak (1986), p. 152.
checked old photographic plates: Hawking and Israel (1989), p. 246.
CHAPTER 24. FINDING A COSMIC YARDSTICK
In the early 1890s, the Harvard College Observatory established a southern station: Jones and Boyd (1971), pp. 289–92.
Pickering shrewdly recognized the value of smart young women: Pickering (1898), p. 4.
These woman “computers” . . . photographic magnitude: Jones and Boyd (1971), pp. 388–90.
began work as a volunteer soon after graduating: Many of the details of Leavitt’s life are drawn from George Johnson’s excellent biography of Henrietta Leavitt. See Johnson (2005).
found a record-setting total of 1,777 new variable stars: Leavitt (1908).
“It is worthy of notice”: Ibid., p. 107.
She had found her law: Leavitt and Pickering (1912).
advised by her doctor to avoid the chilly night air: Johnson (2005), p. 31.
observatory’s prime function was to collect and classify data: Jones and Boyd (1971), p. 369.
dedicated herself for several years to a separate project: Johnson (2005), pp. 56–57.
Hertzsprung picked up where she left off: Hertzsprung (1914).
divulged her interest to . . . Harlow Shapley: Harvard University Archives, letter from Shapley to Leavitt, May 22, 1920.
nominate her for a Nobel Prize in Physics: Johnson (2005), p. 118.
CHAPTER 25. THE COSMOLOGIST LEFT BEHIND
This chapter was first published in Sky & Telescope, Bartusiak (2009b).
ordered a custom-built spectrograph: Hall (1970b), p. 162.
many of America’s greatest astronomers . . . red and blue ends of the spectrum: Smith (1994), pp. 45–48.
eventually becoming a v
irtuoso . . . made of interstellar dust: Hoyt (1996), pp. 129–45.
“Dear Mr. Slipher, I would like to have you take”: Lowell Observatory Archives, Lowell to Slipher, February 8, 1909.
“I do not see much hope of our getting the spectrum”: Lowell Observatory Archives, Slipher to Lowell, February 26, 1909.
“This plate of mine”: Lowell Observatory Archives, Slipher to Lowell, December 3, 1910.
“It is not really very good”: Lowell Observatory Archives, Slipher to Lowell, September 26, 1912.
high-voltage induction coil: Hall (1970a), p. 85.
“encouraging results or (I should say) indications”: Lowell Observatory Archives, Slipher to Lowell, December 19, 1912.
On a seeing-quality scale from 1 to 10: Lowell Observatory Archives, Douglass to Lowell, January 14, 1895.
December 29–31 observation details: Lowell Observatory Archives, Spectrogram Record Book II, September 24, 1912, to July 28, 1913, pp. 69–70.
Slipher chose to publish a brief account: Slipher (1913).
“It looks as if you had made a great discovery”: Lowell Observatory Archives, Lowell to Slipher, February 8, 1913.
“Spectrograms of spiral nebulae are becoming more laborious”: Lowell Observatory Archives, Slipher Papers, Hoyt-V.M. Box, Report F4, titled “Spectrographic Observations of Nebulae and Star Clusters.”
“telescopic object of great beauty”: Lowell Observatory Archives, Slipher Working Papers, Box 4, Folder 4-4.
“no less than three times that of the great Andromeda Nebula”: Ibid.
“When I got the velocity of the Andr. N. I went slow”: Lowell Observatory Archives, Slipher to Miller, May 16, 1913.
“I leaned against it”: Hall (1970a), p. 85.
“It seems to me, that with this discovery”: Lowell Observatory Archives, Hertzsprung to Slipher, March 14, 1914.
“It is a question in my mind”: Lowell Observatory Archives, Slipher to Hertzsprung, May 8, 1914.
confident of what he was seeing: Interview of Henry Giclas by Robert Smith on August 12, 1987, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, Maryland, www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/5022.
“about 25 times the average stellar velocity”: Slipher (1915), p. 23.
his fellow astronomers rose to their feet: Smith (1982), p. 19.
spirals might be “scattering”: Slipher (1917b), p. 407.
to establish that the nebula was indeed a separate island universe: Hubble (1925).
Dispatches from Planet 3 Page 20
