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Star Observations & Personal Equation
Image: Album - Photographs
Source: Museum Victoria
Observing the precise positions of stars required a huge amount of technology, calculation and concentration on the part of the observer. The astronomer would watch the star as it crossed the field of view of the transit telescope, then press a button as the star crossed each of several fine lines in the eyepiece, and press a button when the star met a crossing horizontal and vertical line. Each time the button was pressed a mark was made on a rotating sheet of paper on a precisely controlled chronograph.
Then the astronomer had to shift position and read several microscopes directed at the finely ruled scales on the transit circle, to determine both declination and right ascension (the celestial equivalent of latitude and longitude). Including the taking of the temperature and air pressure, there were as many as 22 different observations to be made for a single star. (See Maunder 1900, pp. 156-63 for a description of the procedure at Greenwich Observatory.)
The observation itself was only the start. Each observation had then to be adjusted carefully to allow for many factors that would influence the measurement: the bending of the star's light rays by the earth's atmosphere, the known errors of the instrument, and other technical factors such as precession, nutation and aberration. These laborious calculations had to be made using pencil and paper and logarithmic tables. A transit observation of 3 or 4 minutes could take hours of computation.
Even the observer had to be taken into account as a source of error. In 1796 the British Astronomer-Royal had dismissed his assistant because he had a 'vicious way of observing the times of the Transits too late', by as much as a second. Astronomers realised that each one had a slightly different way of recording the time; some anticipated the star crossing the line a moment too early, others were slow. Frequent testing allowed the calculation of each observer's peculiar but fairly consistent habits, or 'personal equation', and this could be allowed for in the final calculation of the star's position.
Melbourne Observatory's astronomers would undertake observations of the same stars, to compare their personal equations and adjust their observations to a common standard. When in 1883 Australian observatories undertook to more accurately determine the longitude of each observatory, Pietro Baracchi, a young scientist who was soon to join the Melbourne Observatory staff, was sent to each Australian observatory to compare his personal equation with those of the primary observers in each colony. Typically the differences were no more than a quarter to a third of a second, but it was important to adjust for these if accurate determinations of longitude were to be made.
References:
Maunder, E. Walter (1900). The Royal Observatory Greenwich: A Glance at its History and Work, London: The Religious Tract Society.
Schaffer, Simon (1988). 'Astronomers mark time: discipline and the personal equation,' Science in Context, 2, pp.115-145.
Items per page: 10 50 (showing 1 - 10) 376 items
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Negative - Pietro Baracchi, Government Astronomer
Pietro Baracchi, Government Astronomer 1895-1915,
From: South Yarra, Australia Images: 1 -
Transit Telescope - 8-inch, Troughton & Simms, London, 1883
Transit telescope with 8 inch aperture; 9 foot focal length, made by Troughton & Simms, London in 1883 and installed at Melbourne Observatory in July 1884. The telescope was ordered by ...
From: London, United Kingdom Images: 1 -
Negative - Transit Telescope, 8 Inch, Melbourne Observatory
Eight inch transit telescope erected in East Transit Room at Melbourne Observatory. The telescope, made by Troughton & Simms, London, was installed in 1884.
From: South Yarra, Australia Images: 1 -
Negative - Portrait of Pietro Baracchi, Government Astronomer
Pietro Baracchi, Government Astronomer 1895-1915.
Images: 1 -
Star Catalogue - Epoch 1890, Melbourne Observatory, 1917
Third Melbourne General Catalogue of Stars, for the Epoch 1880, Melbourne Observatory, 1917. The published catalogue of 3068 stars is based on observations primarily undertaken by Edwa ...
From: South Yarra, Australia Images: 2 -
Photograph - 8-inch Transit Telescope, Troughton & Simms, East Transit Room, Melbourne Obs ...
Transit telescope with 8 inch aperture; 9 foot focal length, made by Troughton & Simms, London in 1883 and installed at Melbourne Observatory in July 1884. Photograph in a photograph a ...
From: South Yarra, Australia Images: 1 -
Photograph - 8-inch Transit Telescope, Troughton & Simms, East Transit Room, Melbourne Obs ...
Eight inch transit telescope, made by Troughton & Simms, London, 1883, erected in the East Transit Room at Melbourne Observatory. Photograph in a photograph album used at Melbourne Obs ...
From: South Yarra, Australia Images: 1 -
Pipe Stand & Pipes - Ettore Checchi, circa 1880-1920
Set of pipes which belonged to Ettore Checchi and were used by him in Melbourne during the first half of the 20th century. Ettore migrated from Florence, Italy in 1876, with two friends ...
Images: 1 -
Great Melbourne Telescope - Grubb, 1868
Great Melbourne Telescope, built by Thomas Grubb of Dublin in 1868 and erected at Melbourne Observatory in 1869. Reflector telescope, Cassegrain design, with a 48 inch speculum (metal ...
From: Dublin, Ireland Images: 1 -
Glass Negative - Pietro Baracchi at Melbourne Observatory, South Yarra, Victoria, circa 19 ...
Pietro Baracchi, Government Astronomer 1895-1915, standing at the entrance of the main observatory building, Melbourne Observatory
From: South Yarra, Australia Images: 1
