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astronomy feels
Dec. 9th, 2013 08:16 pmI'm reading an astronomy book from 1942 — I checked it out mostly because it gives the mythological background of constellations, not for anything science related, but I paged through the bit on the planets just for grins.
I grew up after the Pioneer and Voyager probes had passed most of the outer planets, and I have vivid memories of going to the University with my dad and watching a movie screen with the incoming images from Voyager 2's flyby of Neptune. And NASA and other space agencies have sent numerous probes to the other planets as well, so my mental image of what those planets look like is highly informed by those photos taken in the '70s and '80s.
But in 1942, all there were were Earth-based telescopes. No Hubble. No space programs anywhere. So the photos used in this book — and they use photos, not drawings, for the most part, at least as far as our solar system goes — are very small and blurry compared to what I'm used to. If you know what you're looking for, you can make out Mars' polar ice caps, and tell that there are other continent-sized swaths of light and dark, but that's all. Jupiter and Saturn are similarly blurry, the former's Great Red Spot not the swirling morass I've seen in so many pictures, but a fuzzy grey bulge on one of the blurry bands of clouds.
And then there's Pluto, which had only been discovered twelve years earlier and was still almost a complete cipher. "In size it is estimated to be not much larger than Mars," and in a chart showing the characteristics of the planets, most of the boxes have either a "?" or a figure with a "?" after it.
Strange to think how far we have advanced in such a relatively short time, now knowing as much about planets around other stars as we knew about Pluto then. And we know so much more about our own solar system and are still learning more every day — witness the new discovery of an ancient lake on Mars. What a time to be alive.
I grew up after the Pioneer and Voyager probes had passed most of the outer planets, and I have vivid memories of going to the University with my dad and watching a movie screen with the incoming images from Voyager 2's flyby of Neptune. And NASA and other space agencies have sent numerous probes to the other planets as well, so my mental image of what those planets look like is highly informed by those photos taken in the '70s and '80s.
But in 1942, all there were were Earth-based telescopes. No Hubble. No space programs anywhere. So the photos used in this book — and they use photos, not drawings, for the most part, at least as far as our solar system goes — are very small and blurry compared to what I'm used to. If you know what you're looking for, you can make out Mars' polar ice caps, and tell that there are other continent-sized swaths of light and dark, but that's all. Jupiter and Saturn are similarly blurry, the former's Great Red Spot not the swirling morass I've seen in so many pictures, but a fuzzy grey bulge on one of the blurry bands of clouds.
And then there's Pluto, which had only been discovered twelve years earlier and was still almost a complete cipher. "In size it is estimated to be not much larger than Mars," and in a chart showing the characteristics of the planets, most of the boxes have either a "?" or a figure with a "?" after it.
Strange to think how far we have advanced in such a relatively short time, now knowing as much about planets around other stars as we knew about Pluto then. And we know so much more about our own solar system and are still learning more every day — witness the new discovery of an ancient lake on Mars. What a time to be alive.
