Astronomy & Cosmology

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An incredible archive documenting the work of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory between 1965 and 1984, the golden age of uncrewed space exploration, compiled by female control room mission specialist Mary Catherine Grady Beight (1917-2012). The heart of the archive are the 148 photographs taken during the Apollo, Mariner, Pioneer, Viking, Voyager, and Galileo missions, some of which were only released in-house, rather than as public relations packets. There are also congratulatory printed letters to staff from JPL directors, staff newsletters, certificates of achievement, and a small number of souvenirs.

NASA’s Jet propulsion Laboratory was founded in the 1930s as a Caltech student club for amateur rocketry. During the Second World War it was sponsored by the US Army and became a fully-fledged research centre focusing on rocketry. Within three months of Sputnik’s launch in October 1957, JPL had built the United States’ first satellite, Explorer 1, and in 1958 the organisation was transferred to the control of the new civilian space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, while remaining under the management of Caltech. “The Laboratory began to turn its attention from the rockets themselves to the payloads they would carry. Developing these payloads - scientific spacecraft - would become the new focus and place JPL at the center of the Space Race with the Soviet Union... Thus commenced a long series of "first ever" accomplishments by JPL that helped define history's first five decades of space exploration” (JPL website “History & Archives” page).

Women were key employees of JPL from the very beginning of its life as a government research centre. The first was Barbara Canright, hired in 1939 as a mathematical computer to work on the first federal grant project, the development of a rocket plane. More female computers, and eventually engineers and mission specialists, quickly followed (see Holt, Rise of the Rocket Girls, 2016). The compiler of this archive, Mary Catherine Beight, was born in 1917 and attended the LA Business College. Though it is unclear what her previous career was, she joined JPL at age 47 in 1964, and worked as a control room mission specialist for the Deep Space Network before retiring in the mid-1980s. Founded in 1958, the DSN is a world-wide array of communications facilities that support NASA’s interplanetary missions by monitoring and communicating with uncrewed spacecraft. Beight’s role on this team meant her involvement with almost every major mission undertaken during her two decades with JPL, and this probably accounts for the great breadth of her archive.

The archive begins with Apollo missions 5, 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, and 17. Apollo 8 was the first manned mission to orbit the Moon, and included here are photographs of its launch (the first using a Saturn V rocket); the Western hemisphere as seen from the capsule on December 21st; and the full Moon and images of the lunar surface, including the far side. Apollo 10, the “dress rehearsal” for the Moon landing is represented with a photo of the Lunar Module in its practice descent orbit, and the Apollo 11 vehicle is depicted on the launch pad in the early morning. Four photos depict lift-off of Apollo 14 and the equipment and activity on the Lunar surface during Apollo 14, 15, and 17. Additionally, there are photographs of some of the astronauts and the mission patches, a booklet on Apollo 8, and two NASA fact sheets for schools about “Weightlessness” and “Telemetry”. The Deep Space Network was not the primary means of communication for the Apollo missions, but did contribute and served as the primary backup for the main network.

The next major missions represented are Mariner VI and VII, the first dual mission to Mars, in which the two probes studied the surface and atmosphere. Beight has kept a printed booklet of photos, daily status bulletins, and two silver gelatine prints showing the surface of the planet, with dittoed text on the backs. Beight was probably involved with Mariner VI and VII, and it’s clear that she was directly involved with Mariner VIII in 1971, as she has received two photocopied letters from mission manager Dan Schneiderman, one congratulating the team on a “highly successful Mars Orbit Insertion and Orbit Trim Maneuver” (in other words, positioning the satellite in the correct orbit), the second explaining that after the end of a global dust storm the satellite is beginning its mapping and “during the remainder of our mission, lithos of the most noteworth pictures will be forwarded to you on a periodic basis”. These are presumably the 27 photographic prints depicting the surface of the planet included here. There are also three photographs, a silver gelatine print of the control room with dittoed text on the back, and two colour photos of the launch without text, daily status updates, a DSN newsletter discussing the Mars antenna, and some booklets and colour illustrations produced for the public.

In 1972 the first probe to Jupiter, Pioneer 10, was launched, and the archive contains a colour photo titled “Historic photograph taken from NASA’s Pioneer 10 spacecraft, showing the red Spot and Cloud Structure of Jupiter, plus the shadow of its Moon Io”, taken on December 1st, 1973. Two photos are included depicting Jupiter as seen from Pioneer 11, including a close-up of the Red Spot. All three of these images seem to have been produced for internal consumption, particularly the final two, which included technical data in the print.

Next Viking I and II, launched in 1975, became the first probes to land on Mars. This is another program that Beight was clearly involved with, as she has received three certificates of achievement, a congratulatory printed letter from manager Henry W. Norris, ”In spite of the challenges, you have performed in an exemplary manner and two beautiful Viking Orbiters are on their way to Mars, flying with very few concerns”, as well as one from the heads of the Mission Control and Computer Center, in which they extend their appreciation for “your efforts in making the Data Systems Division 91 contributions to the Viking Project such as success”. Included with these letters are 17 colour and black and white photographic prints of the Martian surface, including the “first panoramic view by Viking 1 from the surface of Mars”, dated July 20, 1976. Together with two status bulletins, a photocopied Christmas message from Bruce Murray, a commemorative statement by the Viking scientists, mission stickers, and a published booklet of technical information about Viking. Most interestingly, there is a small black and white Polaroid snapshot of the control room, probably taken with a personal camera.

The Voyager I and II probes were launched in 1977 to explore the outer solar system, in particular Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and then continue into interstellar space. Both are still operational, with Voyager I having travelled further than any other manmade object. Beight received two congratulatory letters for her participation with Voyager, and her archive includes 61 colour and black and white prints from photographs of this mission, including the Titan rockets and a capsule before launch, one of the probes in the laboratory before encapsulation, the Golden record and a copy of the signature plates, and beautiful colour images taken by the probes, including shots of Jupiter, its Great Red Spot, and its ring and planets, including an enormous out-gassing from Io, and Saturn and its rings and planets. There are also four published booklets on Voyager.

Finally, there is material, including photographs, connected with the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, the first space telescope to perform a survey of the entire night sky at infrared wavelengths; SEASAT, the first satellite designed to monitor the Earth’s oceans, the Deep Space Network itself (a colour photograph depicting all four antennas), several copies of “Lab-Oratory” and other JPL staff newsletters, a metal plaque commemorating PlanetFest ‘81, and five original JPL mailing envelopes, many with Beight’s name.

Second printing, in the rare and evocative Raymond McGrath-designed dust jacket.

Author James Jeans (1877-1946) was a respected Cambridge mathematician and astronomer, best known for his work on rotating, gravitational bodies, "a problem of fundamental importance that had already been tackled by some of the leading mathematicians" (ODNB), and the motions, structures, and life-cycles of stars and stellar clusters.

"In 1928 Jeans's academic work Astronomy and Cosmogony came to the attention of S. C. Roberts, the secretary of Cambridge University Press, who appreciated the general interest of its subject matter and the attraction of Jeans's writing style. He persuaded Jeans to write a popular account, The Universe Around Us, which was published by the press in 1929" (ODNB). Jeans's popularity as a writer "depended partly on his topic-new, thought provoking views of the universe-and partly on his style, which combined an authoritative knowledge of the subject with a vivid turn of phrase" (ODNB).

As Jeans describes it in the introduction, The Universe Around Us is “a brief account, written in simple language, of the methods and results of modern astronomical research, both observational and theoretical. Special attention has been given to problems of cosmology and evolution, and to the general structure of the universe.”

The dust jacket designer, Raymond McGrath (1903-1977) was a printmaker, illustrator, architect, and interior designer whose first commission was the interior of the BBC’s Broadcasting House in 1930. He later completed commissions for Imperial Airways and the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, and spent the latter part of his career as Senior and the Principal Architect at the Office of Public Works in Dublin.

An interesting archive of unpublished correspondence between leading radio astronomer Alfred Lovell (1913-2012) and astronomer and science populariser Arthur Beer.

Beer (1900-1980) was born in Richenberg, Bohemia (later Czechoslovakia), and educated in Austria and Germany. He worked as an astronomer at Breslau University, where he studied binary stars, and at the German Maritime Observatory. He also wrote newspaper columns and was responsible for developing one of the first scientific radio programmes, Aus Natur und Technik. Beer escaped from Germany in 1934, assisted by Einstein, who wrote him a public letter of recommendation, and spent the rest of his life in the UK. He worked at the Cambridge Solar Physics Observatory and at the Kew Observatory, and became a member of the Royal Astronomical Society. Beer’s most significant contribution to science was as the founding editor of Vistas in Astronomy, a “voluminous and thorough survey of present-day astronomy” in two volumes, conceived as a Festschrift celebrating the 70th birthday of astrophysicist Frederick J. M. Stratton, under whom he had served in Cambridge. The resulting volumes were so impressive that it was continued first as an annual book and then a quarterly journal.

Beer’s correspondent, the astronomer Alfred Lovell, became interested in radar astronomy while working on British military radar projects during the Second World War and seeing unexplained atmospheric phenomena on radar displays. After the war he set up the first radio telescopes at the University of Manchester, establishing his base at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire. His first major success was in using decommissioned military equipment to determine that the radar echoes he’d seen during the war were caused by meteors. In 1950 he convinced the university to fund a large, custom-designed radar telescope, the Mark I, which was finished just in time to track Sputnik and its launch rocket in 1957. “The technical achievement was acclaimed as a national triumph with defence significance–the rocket was essentially an intercontinental ballistic missile, and no other radar system in the world could detect it. The telescope became a national icon, as well as an emblem of the University of Manchester” (ODNB). He continued his work with telescopes Mark 2 and 3, making observations of a variety of astronomical events and bodies, including US and Soviet lunar probes, and later served as a government administrator for large telescope projects. His work was recognised with the award of the royal medal of the Royal Society in 1960, a knighted the following year, and the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1981.

This file contains correspondence between Beer and Lovell from the initial conception of the Vistas project in early 1952 through the final stages of printing in December, 1954. Lovell opens with a formal request for papers on February 27th, 1952, and Lovell responds on March 7th, “Thank you for your letter... conveying the invitation to contribute to Professor Stratton’s commemoration volume. I shall be very glad to help with this. It is rather difficult to make suggestions about the nature of the contribution until I know what other radio astronomers might be contributing. For example, the nature of any contributions from the Radio School in Cambridge would obviously influence my own contribution great deal. My provisional answer is, therefore, that I will write about radio astronomy, the exact aspect depending upon what other contributions in this field you are expecting to get. Perhaps you will let me know about this in due course.”

On Mach 5th Beer writes that, “The arrangement of the book has made very good progress in the meantime, and you will be pleased to hear that all essential fields appear to be covered by their leading experts. The main sections will be: - Astronomical Vistas, Dynamical Astronomy... Each section has a number of contributors fro various countries; our latest acquisition was the director of the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories... At present the negotiations with publishers are my main preoccupation. For this purpose I am now preparing a provisional list of contributors and suggested titles... Apart from yourself I have only approached two others from your field, namely Ratcliffe and Ryle... Ryle wanted to communicate with you directly as to the question of how to share the radio-astronomical heavens. If you would care to state which part you would like to take over, I shall be delighted to make the necessary arrangements.” Later, in November, he writes to say that he can include a second article by Lovell and wonders if this might also include a drawing or plan of the proposed Mark I telescope. On December 5th Lovell responds, “Thank you for your letter of November 29th, which we discussed when I met you on Wednesday. Subsequently I was able to talk to Ryle and the position now seems quite clear. I shall do my best to let you have two articles from Jodrell Bank - one on Meteors and the other on Pencil Beam Techniques in radio Astronomy, including the new Radio Telescope.”

Additional correspondence follows, primarily related to the forwarding of the articles and illustrations, proofing, and progress with the publishers, with one notable letter from Lovell reading, “I must say that the method used by Pergamon press is excessively irritating and I have never in the whole of my experience had to waste so much time owing to the fact that the proofs and the diagrams have come in bits and pieces over periods of many months. You must be having an awful job on this!”

The two pieces submitted by Lovell were “Large Radio Telescopes and Their Use in Radio Astronomy” (co-authord by R. Hanbury Brown) and “Radio Echo Studies of Meteors” (with J. G. Davies). Of the 16 typed letters signed by Lovell, one has had the signature clipped out to be reproduced in Vistas, and also included in the file is a short autograph note from Lovell’s collaborator R. Hanbury Brown providing a signature as well. There is also a further typed note by Lovell indicating that he wants to approach Lovell for a piece on tracking Sputnik, presumably for a later issue of Vistas, but there is no related correspondence.

First edition and a beautiful copy of this book celebrating the Space Shuttle’s scientific mission and laboratory capabilities, copiously illustrated in full colour. Among the topics covered in this technically advanced volume are studying the human body in space; materials and chemical processes in microgravity; observing the Sun; plasma physics in space; atmospheric science and Earth observations; and astronomy and astrophysics.

First edition and an excellent copy of this book of space-related mathematics for high school teachers.

This volume was published as part of NASA’s drive to incorporate space science into American curriculums during the Space Race. As Michael J. Vaccaro, chairman of the Committee on Space Science Oriented Mathematics, writes in the introduction, “Surrounded by a changing world, the teacher of today must relate new knowledge and new experiences to his students. However, there is a gap between teacher needs and available textbook material. This problem is particularly acute in the areas affected by our efforts in the scientific exploration of space due to the exponential growth of scientific and technical information. Until the results of this research can be incorporated into textbooks for classroom use, supplemental material must provide a partial solution to meeting these needs.” The contents begin with lesson plans on the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems, the solar system, and observing the stars and planets, and go on to cover basic rocketry, gravity and motion, navigation, and studying the weather from space.

A rare and historically significant mezzotint depicting the great meteor seen over Britain on August 18th, 1783, “one of the most riveting astronomical events of the eighteenth century” (Olson & Pasachoff, Fire in the Sky: Comets and Meteors, the Decisive Centuries in British Art and Science, pp. 63-78). We can locate only three institutional copies, at the British Library, the British Museum, and the Wellcome Collection, and no other copies in recent auction records. This copy has been closely trimmed, removing the final line of the text but leaving intact the small cardinal directions at the top, left, and right.

The great meteor of 1783 was visible for over a thousand miles over northwestern Europe. It “ranks among the brightest and most spectacular of such objects ever recorded” and was responsible for some of the “first detailed and generally accurate representations of such a phenomenon” (Beech, “The Great Meteor of 18th August 1783” in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association, vol. 99, no. 3, pp. 130-134). Witnesses reported that the meteor lit up the whole sky, with a letter in the Evening Chronicle recounting that its “lustre almost equalled the sun”. The natural philosopher Tiberious Cavallo viewed the meteor with a group of friends from the terrace at Windsor Castle, later writing that “every object appeared very distinct; the whole face of the country being instantly illuminated” (Payne, “Meteors and Perceptions of Environmental Change in the Annus Mirabilis AD 1783-4”, Northwest Geography, vol. 11, no. 1, 2011).

The man responsible for this print, Henry Robinson, was one of only two artists to make a serious attempt at capturing the meteor’s appearance, the other being Paul Sandby, a draughtsman and the brother of one of Cavallo’s companions at Windsor, who produced a series of still-famous engravings of the event (Beech). Little is known about Robinson save what is included in the print, that he was a schoolmaster who viewed the phenomenon from Winthorpe near Newark-upon-Trent. Though noting that the meteor at first appeared “as one Ball of Fire”, Robinson depicted it in the later stage when it had broken into a number of pieces. “The ‘wiggly’ shape of their tails suggest that they flickered, this being in contrast to the straight tails (and short-lived trains) left by the lesser shooting stars” (Beech). Robinson also effectively used chiaroscuro to represent the meteor’s brightness, highlighting the clouds, sides of buildings, and front of the shocked figure viewing the event (perhaps a self-portrait?) “Robinson’s etching is both pleasing and dramatic, and gives a clear idea of how spectacular this meteor must have appeared when seen from the quiet of rural England” (Beech).

Most significantly, Robinson’s print was immediately recognised as an important contribution to the scientific and historical record. More than eighty years later it was still being cited in scientific discussions of the nature of meteors, with S. A. Herschel comparing Robinson and Sandby’s illustrations to one depicting a fireball over Athens in 1863.

First edition, in the original wrappers, of Rubin’s key paper presenting the first observational evidence for the existence of dark matter. This copy with the ownership signature “Tammann” on the upper cover, likely the Swiss astronomer Gustav Andreas Tammann, director of the Astronomical Institute of the University of Basel and recipient of the Albert Einstein Medal.

Vera Rubin was the daughter of an engineer who fostered her love of science, particularly astronomy. She became the only astronomy graduate at Vasser in 1948 and, after discovering that her first choice of Princeton did not accept female graduate students, earned her Master’s at Cornell and doctorate at Georgetown.

Rubin was particularly interested in the rotation of galaxies, which she had researched under the pioneering female astronomer Margaret Burbidge in 1963. At the time galactic rotation had not properly been measured, but it was expected that the same law of motion that governs the movement of bodies in the solar system would apply to the stars in galaxies. As Newton had shown, the speed of rotation of the stars should drop in proportion to the square root of their distance from the centre. But when Rubin and her collaborator Kent Ford measured star speeds in the Andromeda Galaxy they discovered, to their surprise, that the stars at the edges of the galaxy rotated at the same speed, or slightly faster than, those closer to the centre. This violated the laws of both Newton and Einstein, and implied that the galaxies should have been fraying at the edges as stars were hurled into the void.

The only explanation for this result was that some additional mass was holding the galaxies together. The concept of dark matter had first been proposed by astronomers Fritz Zwicky and Jan Oort in the 1930s, but was largely ignored. And because no one had predicted its effects on galaxies, Rubin didn’t initially recognise its relevance to their situation. But as she explained in an interview with psychologist and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Months were taken up in trying to understand what I was looking at… One day I just decided that I had to understand what this complexity was that I was looking at and I made sketches on a piece of paper and suddenly I understood it all. I have no other way of describing it. It was exquisitely clear. I don’t know why I hadn’t done this two years earlier.” What Rubin realised was that if the outer edges of the galaxy contained a halo of dark matter, the additional mass would hold these stars in place.

Within a few years, other astronomers had constructed a theoretical framework for our understanding of dark matter, and we now have multiple ways to observe its effects on galaxies. The discovery of this mysterious form of matter has had a profound impact on our understanding of everything from the movement of stars to the very life and death of the universe itself. As astronomer Emily Levasque of the University of Washington at Seattle put it, “The existence of dark matter has utterly revolutionized our concept of the universe and our entire field; the ongoing effort to understand the role of dark matter has basically spawned entire subfields within astrophysics and particle physics at this point”

Rubin received numerous honours for her work - she was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1993 and became only the second woman after Caroline Herschel to receive the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. Rubin was long considered a front-runner for the Nobel Prize, and many believe that the Committee’s failure to recognise her before her death in 2016 will be a permanent stain on the organisation’s credibility.

First edition, first impression. A very attractive copy of this key work on stellar parallax which formed the basis for the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, one of the most important graphs in stellar astrophysics, and which laid the groundwork for the modern method of determining stars’ magnitude and understanding their life cycles.

Henry Norris Russell (1877-1957), who worked at both Princeton and Cambridge, was described by astrophysicist F. J. M. Stratton as, "the most eminent and versatile theoretical astrophysicist in the United States if not in the world"."Russell pioneered in the use of atomic physics for the analysis of the stars and thus played a principal part in laying the foundations of present-day astrophysics. He analyzed the physical conditions and chemical compositions of stellar atmospheres and evaluated the relative abundance of the elements. His assertion of the overwhelming abundance of hydrogen was accepted, after prolonged controversy, as one of the basic facts of cosmology" (Princeton University biography).

A rare and evocative lithograph of the Great Comet of 1843 as seen from the Cape of Good Hope, observed and, most unusually, also lithographed by the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819-1900). Copies of this print are exceptionally scarce, with none recorded in COPAC, WorldCat, or auction records. Given that the paper was never published, it seems unlikely that more than a handful were produced.

Smyth was born to well-connected British parents in Naples, his father being a naval officer and respected amateur astronomer, and his mother the daughter of the British Consul to the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Smyth’s godfather was the famous Sicilian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi, from whom he received his middle name. Thanks to his father’s connections, at age sixteen Smyth was made assistant to Thomas Maclear, HM Astronomer at the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope. “He spent ten years in southern Africa working in positional astronomy and in arduous geodetic surveys of the province. Encouraged by John Herschel, he experimented in early photography and in 1843 succeeded in producing the oldest known calotypes of people and scenes in southern Africa” (ODNB).

During Smyth’s time in the Cape a remarkable comet appeared in the skies. “The Great March Comet of 1843 was so bright that it was seen in the daytime sky by many people on every continent”, though its brightest and largest appearance was in the southern hemisphere (Stoyan, Atlas of Great Comets). Its tail, measuring up to 70° (more than 350 million kilometers in length), still holds the record for length, and John Herschel described it in 1849 as “by far the most remarkable comet of the century” (Stoyan).

Smyth was a talented amateur artist who frequently painted and sketched, both in connection with his astronomical work and as an observer of the people and landscapes around him. “The naturalistic representations and watercolours by Chales Piazzi Smyth, who was working at the Cape of Good Hope when the comet appeared, are the most impressive reproductions of this apparition of a comet” (Stoyan). Smyth was particularly interested in printing techniques and their applications to scientific illustration. His first major published work was a paper submitted to the Royal Astronomical Society on this subject, in which he “reviews critically the illustrations in several recent publications and discourses with apparent authority on the processes of engraving, aquatintintg and mezzotinting. He suggests modifications that might be used to yield more subtle effects” (Warner, Charles Pizaai Smyth: Astronomer-Artist, His Cape Years, p. 113).

Smyth’s proficiency with lithography and copperplate engraving allowed him to print the illustrations for his own papers, a practice that was (and indeed, still is) unusual (Warner, p. 113). In 1846 he was appointed Astronomer Royal at Edinburgh, “the hub of the printing and illustration industry... in these circumstances he did not need to acquire a press, but bought or hired stones on which he could draw his pictures and then send the stones to the nearest printer. Piazzi was engaged in lithographing of his sketches ‘The Zodiacal Light as Seen at the Cape of Good Hope’ and ‘The Great Comet of 1843’ —to be used in his published accounts— when [his friend from South Africa, the artist] Charles Bell arrived in 1847”. At first, Piazzi sent his stones to the printer W. Walton, who was probably responsible for this print, but later Bell purchased a press which he and Piazzi shared (Warner, pp. 114-115).

Both The Great Comet and The Zodiacal Light were meant to illustrate Smyth’s unpublished paper “Attempt to apply instrumental measurement to the zodiacal light”, which was completed on March 25th, 1848, received by the Royal Society on the 13th of April, and withdrawn on the 2nd of November. The manuscript and the original painting are still at the Royal Society and have been digitised (references AP/30/18 and AP/30/18/5), and two oil paintings of the comet by Smyth are held at the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich (object ID BHC4148 and BHC4147). This copy of the lithograph is especially intriguing because of the pencilled annotation where Smith’s printed initials should be: “CPS del[iniavit] & lit”, indicating that he made the lithograph himself. Though the writing is dissimilar to Smyth’s formal hand, the likeliest explanation is that it was inserted by himself or someone close to him.

A rare and evocative lithograph of the zodiacal light as seen from the Breede River in South Africa, observed and, most unusually, lithographed by the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819-1900). Smyth’s print was “the first attempt to furnish a realistic depiction of this elusive feature” of the night sky (Warner, Charles Pizaai Smyth: Astronomer-Artist, His Cape Years, p. 101). Copies of this lithograph are exceptionally scarce. We can locate only one, in the Herschel family collection at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich (object ID PAH6023). Searches of COPAC, WorldCat, and auction records trace no others. Given that the paper they were designed to illustrate was never published, it seems unlikely that more than a handful were ever produced.

Smyth was born to well-connected British parents in Naples, his father being a naval officer and respected amateur astronomer, and his mother the daughter of the British Consul to the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Smyth’s godfather was the famous Sicilian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi, from whom he received his middle name. Thanks to his father’s connections, at age sixteen Smyth was made assistant to Thomas Maclear, HM Astronomer at the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope. “He spent ten years in southern Africa working in positional astronomy and in arduous geodetic surveys of the province. Encouraged by John Herschel, he experimented in early photography and in 1843 succeeded in producing the oldest known calotypes of people and scenes in southern Africa” (ODNB). It was during this period that Smyth attempted observations of the zodiacal light. This is the glow, also known as the false dawn, which appears along the ecliptic at twilight and just before sunrise, and is caused by light from the sun reflecting off interplanetary dust.

In addition to photography, Smyth was a talented amateur artist who frequently painted and sketched, both in connection with his astronomical work and as an observer of the people and landscapes around him. His depictions of the Great Comet of 1843 are now considered “the most impressive” illustrations of that apparition (Stoyan, Atlas of Great Comets). Smyth was particularly interested in printing techniques and their applications to scientific illustration. His first major published work was a paper submitted to the Royal Astronomical Society on this subject, in which he “reviews critically the illustrations in several recent publications and discourses with apparent authority on the processes of engraving, aquatintintg and mezzotinting. He suggests modifications that might be used to yield more subtle effects” (Warner, p. 113).

Smyth’s proficiency with lithography and copperplate engraving allowed him to print the illustrations for his own papers, a practice that was (and indeed, still is) unusual (Warner, p. 113). In 1846 he was appointed Astronomer Royal at Edinburgh, “the hub of the printing and illustration industry... in these circumstances he did not need to acquire a press, but bought or hired stones on which he could draw his pictures and then send the stones to the nearest printer. Piazzi was engaged in lithographing of his sketches ‘The Zodiacal Light as Seen at the Cape of Good Hope’ and ‘The Great Comet of 1843’ —to be used in his published accounts— when [his friend from South Africa, the artist] Charles Bell arrived in 1847”. At first, Piazzi sent his stones to the printer W. Walton, who was probably responsible for this print, but later Bell purchased a press which he and Piazzi shared (Warner, pp. 114-115).

Both The Zodiacial Light and Great Comet were meant to illustrate Smyth’s unpublished paper “Attempt to apply instrumental measurement to the zodiacal light”, which was completed on March 25th, 1848, received by the Royal Society on the 13th of April, and withdrawn on the 2nd of November. The manuscript and the original painting are still at the Royal Society and have been digitised (references AP/30/18 and AP/30/18/7). This copy of the lithograph is especially intriguing because of the pencilled annotation next to Smith’s printed initials, “del[iniavit] & lit”, indicating that Smyth made the lithograph himself. Though the writing is dissimilar to Smyth’s formal hand, the likeliest explanation is that it was inserted by himself or someone close to him. This annotation does not appear in the NMM copy.

The zodiacal light continued to be an interest of Smyth’s throughout his career, particularly in the 1870s when he turned his attention to “spectroscopy and the ‘new astronomy’, a term used to denote the area of astronomy later known as astrophysics... One of his aims, successfully carried out, was to discriminate in the sun's spectrum between absorption lines of purely solar origin and those produced in the earth's atmosphere. Among other researches were studies of the spectra of the aurora (observed from Edinburgh), the zodiacal light (observed from Palermo), and the so-called rainband, due to atmospheric water vapour. In the laboratory he concentrated on the spectra of diatomic molecules and, in collaboration with Alexander Stewart Herschel, deciphered the harmonic structure of the green carbon monoxide band” (ODNB).

An archive of correspondence between astronomer Arthur Beer and Nobel Prize winning chemist Harold Urey regarding the latter’s contribution to Vistas in Astronomy.

Beer (1900-1980) was born in Richenberg, Bohemia (later Czechoslovakia), and educated in Austria and Germany. He worked as an astronomer at Breslau University, where he studied binary stars, and at the German Maritime Observatory. He also wrote newspaper columns and was responsible for developing one of the first scientific radio programmes, Aus Natur und Technik. Beer escaped from Germany in 1934, assisted by Einstein, who wrote him a public letter of recommendation, and spent the rest of his life in the UK. He worked at the Cambridge Solar Physics Observatory and at the Kew Observatory, and became a member of the Royal Astronomical Society. Beer’s most significant contribution to science was as the founding editor of Vistas in Astronomy, a “voluminous and thorough survey of present-day astronomy” in two volumes, conceived as a Festschrift celebrating the 70th birthday of astrophysicist Frederick J. M. Stratton, under whom he had served in Cambridge. The resulting volumes were so impressive that it was continued first as an annual book and then a quarterly journal.

American chemist Harold Urey (1893-1981) did key work on atomic and molecular structures, particularly hydrogen isotopes. This led him to the discovery of deuterium, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1934. During the Second World War he led the Manhattan Project’s branch at Columbia University, where he applied his knowledge of isotope separation techniques to the problem of isolating of pure uranium 235 on an industrial scale. After the war he worked at the Institute for Nuclear Studies at the University of Chicago. In 1958 Urey moved to the University of California, San Diego, where he did groundbreaking work on the origins of life on Earth, conducting a laboratory simulation of the conditions on the early Earth and proving that they were ideal for the production of cellular building blocks such as amino acids.

The correspondence present here consists of five letters from Urey, mainly on practical issues connected with his contribution to Beer’s book. In the first, on September 10th, 1952, he replies to Beer’s request for submissions, apologising for taking so long to reply as “I have not been able to think of a subkect to write about. I am leaving for Europe on the 14th of September and hope to visit Cambridge about October 15th. If it isn’t too late by that time perhaps we can discuss the question then. In the meantime, I will turn this over in my mind and try to think of something that I might contribute to the book.” On January 8th the following year he writes, “At last the paper for the Stratton volume!... I wish it were a better paper. If you do not wish to publish it I shall not be offended at all. There are quite a few notes and I believe references and notes are more easily read if placed at the bottom of the page. But perhaps your rules are all made long ago.” Later that month Urey sends short note to confirm receipt of the document, and in July he asks that the proofs be mailed to him in Stockholm. The final letter, dated by Beer in pencil as postmarked July 31st, 1953, discusses the terms he has chosen for the index (”I have underlined [in the returned proof, not present here] expressions indicating topics for the index... on the margins I have written additional suggestions” and relates that the illustrations had not arrived yet when he left for the states, but that “I believe the figures can be assumed to be all right”.

A dramatic and uncommon mezzotint depicting the spectacular meteor seen in London on February 11th, 1850, by the prominent court artist Matthew Coates Wyatt (1777-1862). One other copy of this print appears in recent auction records, sold at Galerie Bassenge in 2016, and institutional copies are held at the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, Museum Bojmans in Rotterdam, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the British Museum, which has George Cruikshank’s copy, presented to him by the artist.

“In 1850 a huge meteor appeared over England and was visible in London. It was captured dramatically by Matthew Coates Wyatt over Paddington in a mezzotint that suggests, due to the explosion and sparks of its head, that it was a bolide... Other accounts and representations from various locations were reported in the Illustrated London News... as well as in other periodicals. James Glaisher, the assistant to the Astronomer Royal, published an appeal for additional reports in the same issue, and consequently so many accounts were sent in that Glaisher had them published in the Philosophical Magazine” (Olson & Pasachoff, Fire in the Sky: Comets and Meteors, the Decisive Centuries in British Art and Science, pp. 213-214).

“By good luck, the painter and sculptor Matthew Cotes Wyatt happened to witness the meteor over Paddington; sensing a market, he published this velvety mezzotint of the view two months later... The technique had largely gone out of fashion by 1850, but the rich darks and brilliant lights that it allows were a perfect choice for this dramatic nighttime scene” (Museum of Fine Arts Boston).

Wyatt was the youngest son of the architect James Wyatt and a favourite in the court of George III. “His designs represented a dramatic and full-blooded union of neo-classicism and baroque revival. He was more a theatrical designer than a sculptor in the conventional sense” (ODNB). Wyatt was responsible for a number of significant commissions, including the ceiling of the concert room at Hanover Square; the Nelson monument in the Exchange Flags at Liverpool; Princess Charlotte’s marble cenotaph in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor; the bronze equestrian statue of George III that stands in Pall Mall East; and extensive decorative work at Belvoir Castle, home of the Duke of Rutland.

First and only edition of this rare guide to memorising timekeeping rules and astronomical tables, from the library of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann (1929-2019), with his bookplate on the front pastedown. Only one copy of this book appears in auction records, sold at Dominic Winter in 2004, and WorldCat locates five institutional copies, at the British Library, St. Andrews, Cambridge, Glasgow, and the Open University.

Murray Gell-Mann was one of the founders of the standard model of physics, responsible for predicting the existence of both quarks and gluons. “To bring order to a plethora of recently discovered subatomic particles, in 1961 Gell-Mann proposed a set of rules based on symmetries in the fundamental forces of nature. The rules classified subatomic particles called hadrons into eight groups, a scheme he named the eightfold way in a reference to Buddhist philosophy. In 1964, he realized that such rules would naturally arise if the particles were composed of two, three or more fundamental particles, held together by the strong nuclear force... protons and neutrons, for example, would be made up of three of these more fundamental particles, which Gell-Man named quarks, inspired by a quote — ‘Three quarks for Muster Mark!’ — from James Joyce’s 1939 novel Finnegans Wake (Nature obituary, 28 May, 2019).

As is apparent from his esoteric naming conventions, Gell-Man was a polymath with extremely wide-ranging interests, foremost among them linguistics and archaeology. Novelist Cormac McCarthy described him as knowing “more things about more things than anyone I’ve ever met”. Gell-Mann “wanted to understand the ‘chain of relationships’ that connected the universal laws of physics to complex systems like economies and human cultures. He described these two extremes of interest in his 1994 book, The Quark and the Jaguar, as ‘two aspects of nature…on the one hand, the underlying physical laws of matter and the universe, and on the other, the rich fabric of the world that we perceive directly and of which we are a part’” (Santa Fe Institute obituary, 24 May, 2019). These interests led him to found the Santa Fe Institute to collaborate with “economists, linguists, biologists, computer scientists, and with other physicists who shared his passion for finding fundamental principles in learning, evolving systems” (Santa Fe Institute obituary). It may have been Gell-Mann’s interest in linguistics or a related field that attracted him to this volume.

Little is known of the author of this work, W. D. Snooke, but he was apparently a professor of mathematics and was also responsible for a volume on the botany of the Isle of Wight and a selection of Psalms. The Calendar of Memory was well-reviewed by Mechanic’s Magazine, which reported that “we earnestly recommend this work to all who have ever experienced the benefit of the old verse beginning with ‘thirty days hath September’, which is much the same thing, we presume, as if we were to recommend it to every man, woman, and child, in the three kingdoms... Although the memorial verses form, of course, the peculiar feature of Mr. Snooke’s Calendar, they are far from being its only recommendation. The rules embodied in them, and the explanations by which they are accompanied, are distinguished by great simplicity, conciseness, and accuracy” (Mechanic’s Magazine, Museum Register, Journal and Gazette, no., 309, July 11, 1829, p. 352).