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Posted on May 16, 2021
Telescopes are the most recognizable tool in the astronomer’s toolkit, but equally important are the tools for recording astronomical data. In the 19th century, they included glass photographic plates, which captured snapshots of the night sky through the telescope, and notebooks for recording observations and measurements from the plates.
The 24-inch Bruce Doublet telescope installed in Arequipa, Peru. (Courtesy of Harvard College Observatory)
Left: Glass plate photograph taken in Arequipa in 1925. (Courtesy of Harvard). Right: Cover of Annie Jump Cannon’s notebook featuring ‘Observations in Arequipa.’ (Courtesy of Harvard (Image ID: phaedra2228))
Beginning in 1885, the Harvard College Observatory (now part of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) began an ambitious project to survey the entire night sky. Astronomers at Harvard’s central observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and its new observatory in Arequipa,
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On November 19, 2014 Google commemorated the 57th birthday of Ofra Haza with a Google Doodle. Who?
Also in 2014, Google Doodle honored the 151st birthday of Annie Jump Cannon. Who?
A few days after that, Wassily Kandinsky was similarly recognized with a Google Doodle on his 148th birthday. Who?
Well today is the 100th birthday of Frank Sinatra so obviously Google Doodle must honor Ol Blue Eyes. If you thought that you would be wrong. Relative nonentities receive honors from Google but when it comes to a major cultural icon on his 100th birthday, they amazingly chose to ignore him. Truly pathetic. To get an idea of how Frank Sinatra changed the world, let us read this column by David Lehman, author of