Abstracts
Wednesday June 11 Public Invited Talk
Talk: “The Knowledge Economy of Geocentric Astronomy from the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Century”
Matteo Valleriani, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
This lecture explores the knowledge economy of geocentric astronomy between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, a period marked
by profound transformations in the ways astronomical knowledge was produced, transmitted, and institutionalized. Anchored in the intellectual
framework of the quadrivium, university teaching played a pivotal role in shaping and organizing astronomical knowledge. Central to this
tradition was the rise of Sacrobosco’s Tractatus de Sphaera, which emerged as a foundational text and remained a reference point for centuries.
The lecture will trace the evolution of geocentric astronomy through the manuscript tradition and the subsequent shift to print culture,
highlighting how these media shaped the dissemination and standardization of knowledge. It will examine the parallel processes of transformation
and homogenization of astronomical core knowledge on a continental scale during the early modern period, driven by both scholarly networks and
broader sociopolitical forces.
Special attention will be given to the visual and material dimensions of this knowledge economy, including the tradition of astronomical
illustrations and computational tables. These epistemic tools not only reflected scientific practices but also interacted with structures
of political power, revealing the complex entanglements between astronomy, authority, and the shaping of worldviews.
Thursday June 12 Workshop Papers, Panel, and Poster (in presentation order)
Paper: “Training Astronomers, Teaching the Public: Making and Circulating Sundial Templates in Late Imperial China”
Christopher DeCou, University of Michigan
Technical experts in late imperial China used sundial templates to train astronomers and circulate astronomical knowledge. I propose to
address two conference themes in this presentation: (1) how making visualizations was itself a part of the formation of astronomical
training and (2) how instrument designs changed from specialized knowledge in manuscript to print as public knowledge. Making sundials
became significant in astronomical practice through exchanges with missionaries. Learning how to build sundials taught astronomical
models and introduced thinking with geometry. While missionaries influenced pedagogy in Beijing, sundial templates entered popular
culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. New demand from about 1790 to 1850 promoted manuals, new tools, and
simplified instructions to initiate outsiders into the community of “tongru” or “penetrating Confucians”, that is, expert philologists
and classical scholars who trained in mathematics and calendrical astronomy. This opened the opportunity for technical experts to
translate previously secret skills into images and texts for readers. They printed popular manuals on how to build sundials. At the
same time, these books also marketed their reputations as experts. In sum, although historians have tended to view the early nineteenth
century as an inward turn and the end of long-distance exchanges, this presentation suggests that visual practices reframe how we understand
those periods and the local conditions for learning astronomy.
Paper: “Seeing a New Sun: Refining Visual Practice in Nineteenth-century Solar Studies ”
Sarah Reynolds, University of Indianapolis
Studies of the Sun and its spectrum were foundational to the rise of astrophysics in the nineteenth century, to the extent that Samuel Pierpont Langley suggested that the “new astronomy” also could be called “solar physics.” While studies of the Sun provided new knowledge about stars and the properties of light, they also drove the development and further refinement of visual practices and related technologies. For all its prominence in our sky, the Sun was observationally challenging in a myriad of ways. Important features like the solar corona were known to be only visible within the limited location and time-window of a total solar eclipse, leading to mobilization and coordination of whole networks of observers. Other observations of the solar surface (photosphere) required careful analysis and interpretation as they revealed a dynamic world of unknown structure existing at near-unimaginable extremes. I’ll show how works by Langley and other nineteenth-century authors such as Mabel Loomis Todd reveal an astronomical community developing an increasingly sophisticated set of standards and practices for visual work at the frontiers of knowledge.
Poster: “Astronomical Photographic Plates: More than a Century of Service”
Jennifer Lynn Bartlett, Center for Astrophysics, Harvard and Smithsonian; Sharon Hunt, NOIRLab; Elizabeth Griffin, Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre; Wayne Osborn, Yerkes Observatory; Stephen Levine, Lowell Observatory
From approximately 1880 through 1980, photographic plates were the only mechanical detector available to astronomers for recording their observations. Fortunately, the several million such plates that have been preserved from that era have retained their information faithfully for such a timespan. Because all celestial objects change—most on very slow, but some on rapid, time-scales—those plates have bequeathed to astronomy a unique historical record of how these objects move and evolve. Once digitized, shared, re-examined, and combined with modern electronic observations, plates continue to extend the available timespan for research. Time-domain astronomy in the twenty-first century is thus facilitated by photographic records that extend back to the nineteenth century.
The creation, maintenance, and analysis of photographic plates required an entire ecosystem of observatory activities. Through the annotations found on plates, envelopes, and storage boxes, and in logbooks, historians can trace the scientific processes that underlie our current knowledge of the physical universe, the people who facilitated astronomical discovery, and the networks that disseminated astrophysical knowledge. The plates themselves are evidence of evolving technologies and research priorities.
Astronomical imagery in many media, including photographic plates, captivates the public imagination. In photographs, the night sky is rendered available at any time and in greater detail than the naked eye perceives. In the early twentieth century, direct images made from photographic plates graced lantern slides for talks and illustrated publications for both technical and amateur audiences. In the twenty-first century, artists continue to draw inspiration from photographic plates, both as celestial imagery and as historical artifacts.
Although a vibrant legacy of scientific observations and historical activity, photographic plates are fragile connections to the past. The International Astronomical Union Working Group on the Preservation and Digitization of Photographic Plates advocates for their scientific use. The International Glass Plates Group is a community of astronomers, librarians, and archivists working together to maintain and promote multiple uses of these archives.
We can never see the same sky again and cannot know what new questions future generations researchers will ask. With care, these photographic plates will continue to be a source of scientific investigation, historical exploration, and creative inspiration for years to come.
Session: “Starring the Earth: Science, Our Planet, and the Plurality of Worlds”
Organizer: Chris Graney, Vatican Observatory. Participants: Dennis R. Danielson; Steven J. Dick, Former NASA Chief Historian; Pavel (Paul) Gabor, S.J.; alternate (remotely, from Rome): Guy Consolmagno, S.J.
Graney and Danielson are putting the finishing touches on a book that is under contract with OUP. By June 2025 it should be well in press. Its working title is Starring the Earth. In it they argue for a revision of how historians, astronomers, and the broader public all see the role of science in the story of the Copernican system, the Plurality of Worlds, and the place of our Earth in the universe. Part of their argument involves the question of star sizes in the Copernican system; some discussion of how stars are represented in world system diagrams will connect with the theme of “Visual practices in the production and transmission of astronomical knowledge”. In this session Graney and Danielson will each present a synopsis of their central argument, seen from the standpoint of science (Graney) and the humanities (Danielson). Then there will be invited critical responses and commentary from the standpoint of a historian of science (Dick) and a working research astronomer (Gabor). Lastly, there will be open discussion.
Paper: “Numbers as Variables in Babylonian Mathematical Astronomy”
Erica L. Meszaros, Brown University
One interesting feature of the system A lunar table texts, a part of Babylonian mathematical astronomy from the late first millennium BCE, is what Neugebauer (1955) identified as column Φ. Column Φ measures the lunar contribution to the length of the Saros, a period of 223 lunar months used for predicting eclipse possibilities, beyond 6585 days. Φ is a particularly intricate concept to describe in English, and no tablets have yet been found that attest to an emic, prose description of the phenomenon in Akkadian. Instead, the procedure texts refer to Φ by its truncated maximum value of 2,13;20 (in the Babylonian sexagesimal system). Referencing this value by number instead of a verbal name describes an unusual appearance of “variables” within these procedure texts. The choice of numerical value makes sense—in addition to being the maximum value for truncated Φ schemes, the ΦG interpolation tables begin with 2,13;20 for Φ (Ossendrijver 2012: 127), and this truncated form of Φ is used in the R–S schemes (Brack-Bernsen 2020: 627n17). However, using any number as a “name” (Brack-Bernsen 2020: 627; Ossendrijver 2012: 205) or “technical term” (Neugebauer 1957: 18-19; Ossendrijver 2012: 127) seems unique—both within the corpus of Babylonian procedure texts and when compared with modern variable naming practices. This talk will show how 2,13;20 highlights a complex system of variables at work within the Babylonian astronomical procedure texts. Teasing out distinctions between the number itself and the number as a nominative numeral suggests the use of named values that vary within the procedures. While they clearly do not match modern variables, they do so in a way that showcases even more complexity than may have previously been assigned to this period. This analysis will also show how the use of a number as a name for Φ highlights some uniquely Babylonian naming conventions, suggesting that while the number as a name for a variable name phenomenon may not be common, it is at least in keeping with standard cultural praxis
Paper: “The Earliest Lunar Model of Albertus Magnus ”
Betsey Price, York University
By the medieval thirteenth century, all the ingredients necessary for Latin scholars to exercise an evaluative response to texts of mathematical astronomy, increasingly available and varied, were present: adequate numeracy, epistemology, observation, and use of astronomical tables, as well as the manuscript texts and their illustrations. It is asked how the exemplary thinker Albertus Magnus (1200–1280) addressed ideas and authorities on astronomy. Visual imagery is key to understanding the approach of his sources and his own, as demonstrated in Albertus’s earliest writings on lunar phase phenomena. It is argued that Albertus’s understanding of his sources, specifically here, Martianus Capella and Macrobius and their lunar modeling, is inextricably linked to his interpretation of the visual imagery that accompanied their texts.
Paper: “The Toledan Tables at Brown University: The Case of Ms. Gerardus ca. 1130”
Johanna Garzon, Brown University
The paper investigates the production of astronomical knowledge through the visual practices embedded in medieval tabular manuscripts, with a focus on an unpublished fragment of the Toledan Tables at Brown University, Ms. Gerardus c.1130. Through detailed analysis of adjustments in layout, color coding, and linguistic variation, the study demonstrates how the material and visual design of this manuscript were not merely aesthetic choices but were deeply intertwined with epistemic and cultural practices. The paper argues that the visual arrangements—including the directional flow of reading and the spatial organization of data—shaped the interpretive strategies of both users and scribes, fostering an explicit form of visual reasoning essential to medieval astronomical inquiry. By examining the interplay between textual content and its visual presentation, this work sheds light on how technical constraints, linguistic contexts, and material practices coalesced to produce, transmit, and transform astronomical knowledge. In doing so, it contributes to a broader understanding of the role of astronomical tables as historical actors in the development of visual and computational methodologies, and invites further interdisciplinary exploration into the evolution of visual representations across different periods and cultural contexts.
Paper: “Air Force Origins of Scientific Instruments and Space Technology for Visualizing the Cosmic Microwave Background”
Connemara Doran, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Air Force Research Laboratory
This talk discusses the development of technologies and instrumentation that made possible the detection and imaging of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), relic radiation from the aftermath of the big bang. It analyzes how these technologies of detection and visualization originated in military-funded projects, beginning with radar research during the second world war and continuing in the 1950s through the 1970s with Air Force funding of satellites, radio telescopes, and U2-plane experiments. In some instances, the instruments originally were designed for defense use and subsequently adapted and applied to astronomical and cosmological observation, while in other instances the Air Force directly funded the basic science experiments themselves. In addition to analyzing the visual practices surrounding the production of CMB images, the talk engages with philosophical questions about the nature of basic science and how it is related to technological innovation. The talk also dialogues with recent work by Naomi Oreskes on how military funding of Cold War science reveals important insights into the teleological truth-seeking nature of scientific inquiry.
Paper: “Digital Stars as Seen through Their Software Artifacts”
Dana A. Freiburger, independent scholar
The advent of modern digital computers in the mid-twentieth century led to many changes in the practice of astronomy that compelled the handling of stars in new digital formats. Hence, with computers came computer programming, which led to the creation of what I will call digital stars. These digital stars can be found in program source code, file record layouts, database definitions, design documents, and other software artifacts. It is through these artifacts that my talk explores how digital stars were first specified, what data they initially conveyed, and how they changed as their employ in astronomy broadened.
Specifically, I want to look at three moments involving digital stars. First, there was the moment when existing printed star catalogues were converted into digital form. Second, I want to explore when digital star catalogues transformed into interactive searchable databases abetted by copious computer disk storage and enhanced software. Third, the information in these databases recently became food for AI machine learning systems that then produced new star catalogues. No longer was stellar astronomy as matter of observe, record, and publish; now it has shifted to open a data file, compute, and write a data file with digital stars at each step’s center. Like ouroboros, digital stars are consuming digital stars.
Digital stars serve as human-constructed representations of stellar objects, not visual as such, but nonetheless functional with their content configured by programming paradigms and binary data. My talk looks at this historically unexplored universe of digital stars in the astronomical sciences to reveal some of their technical underpinnings in how they conveyed and produced knowledge.
Paper: “Visualization Practices in Soviet Radio Astronomy’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)”
Gabriela Radulescu, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
This paper examines various visualization practices in SETI during its earliest phase, from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s. The ability to utilize waves beyond the visible spectrum of electromagnetic radiation was a prerequisite for astronomers seeking to detect potential radio communications from extraterrestrial intelligence. Additionally, SETI relied on visual representations that framed humans as part of a continuum—from nature to technology and from the universe to life and intelligence. The relationship between these two visual tenets of SETI epistemology played a crucial role in securing key support from the USSR Academy of Sciences. This support was essential for two significant advancements: first, transitioning SETI from a grassroots, individual initiative to an officially sanctioned, top-down research project, and second, facilitating an influential Soviet-American conference on SETI at one of the Soviet Union’s most prestigious astrophysical observatories. Drawing on archival records, published materials, and oral history accounts, this paper demonstrates how scientific visualization practices functioned as scientific-political epistemes.
Paper: “Toward a Unified History and Philosophy of Astronomy”
Steven J. Dick, Former NASA Chief Historian
It is well known that the boundaries between science and philosophy are often blurry at the frontiers of knowledge, as cosmologist Bernard Carr and others have emphasized. But philosophical problems actually infuse the theory and practice of astronomy writ large. Among these problems are changes in the metaphysical foundations of astronomy from Newtonian mechanics to relativity and quantum mechanics; metaphysical influences on astronomy, seen in the work of Eddington and others; the limits of reasoning, starkly evident in the multiverse and anthropic principle; the problematic nature of observation and inference, ranging from the canals of Mars to dark matter; methodological issues such as the role of technology in determining astronomical results, recently explored by Martin Harwit; and the epistemological status of astronomy and its central concepts such as space and time, discovery and classification, and life and intelligence. A new book project, Astronomy and Philosophy: Conceptual and Methodological Foundations and Challenges, to be published by Cambridge University Press, aims to address all these problems from a variety of perspectives. The project includes twenty-eight authors, including fourteen historians of astronomy, ten philosophers, and five scientists. While several recent books have focused on the philosophy of cosmology and the philosophy of astrophysics, the more unified philosophy of astronomy advocated here is broadly conceived to include not only classical astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology, but also space science and astrobiology. The history of astronomy plays an important role in this endeavor. As philosopher Norwood Russell Hanson suggested long ago, the history of science without philosophy is blind, while the philosophy of science without history is empty. Historians and philosophers are increasingly intimately involved in ongoing projects such the Black Hole Initiative and the Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time Discovery Alliance. These activities indicate that the need for a new unified history and philosophy of astronomy has reached a critical mass, and that a more coherent discipline is ready for launch, with essential help from historians of astronomy. Such a field illuminates both astronomical and philosophical problems, and imparts to the general public and the media the idea that science advances, not cleanly and linearly, but infused with methodological and philosophical challenges.
Friday June 13 Papers and Panel at the Adler Planetarium (in presentation order)
Paper: “Sacrobosco Finds ‘Ynglysche’: The Four Translations, Their Authors, Their Sources, and Their Visual Features”
Jamie Brannon, independent scholar
Vernacular editions of Sacrobosco’s cosmographic primer De Sphaera (ca. 1220) were published in sixteenth-century France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. But where was England’s contribution to this growing international effort in celestial education? It too was there, but persisted only in isolated manuscripts. It took another 400 years before a direct Latin-to-English translation of De Sphaera found its way into print publication. I will discuss the four translators who authored English editions of Sacrobosco’s most famous work—Anthony Ascham (1527), William Thomas (ca. 1550), Thomas Van Cleve (1921), and Lynn Thorndike (1949)—and address which source(s) they employed, along with their works’ visual aspects. What makes these translators unique is their use of clearly identifiable Latin sources. Their final products evolved from manuscripts (for the first three) to a print book (Thorndike), while their visual splendor devolved from Ascham’s spectacular early effort (large format diagrams, charts, maps, volvelles—all in color) to Thorndike’s diagram-less modern volume in black and white. Surprisingly, there is no evidence that members of this foursome were aware of one another’s translations—a striking fact, particularly for the famously sleuth-like Thorndike. Further, the first three translators employed sixteenth-century print volumes of De Sphaera to produce manuscripts (print to manuscript), while Thorndike’s twentieth-century atavistic approach, ironically, engaged medieval Latin manuscripts to craft the first English-language hardcover (manuscript to print). Better known English-language print works from the sixteenthth century that are only “based-on” De Sphaera, such as Robert Recorde’s 1556 The Castle of Knowledge, Richard Eden’s 1561 The Arte of Navigation, and Thomas Hill’s 1599 The Schoole of Skil, do not have readily identifiable Latin sources. Considerations on why the manuscripts of Anthony Ascham and William Thomas evaded transformation to print, and whether undiscovered English translations might exist, will conclude the talk.
Paper: “The Extended Life of the Early Modern Volvelle”
Molly C. Laumakis, independent scholar
The astronomical volvelle, a popular sixteenth-century system of movable paper discs typically situated within a book, has long been deemed an unfortunate early modern technological victim of the Copernican Revolution in Europe. Taking as a lens the works of Peter Apian (1495–1552) and drawing from research in first editions of his works at the University of Chicago Special Collections, I argue that the astronomical volvelle is not indicative of an astronomical instrument that could not withstand the Copernican Revolution as a mode of knowledge production, but instead is an instance of the implementation of a visual tool for the dissemination of knowledge in a popular subject that was later deemed epistemically unviable. I will show that the volvelle itself was not intrinsically linked to any specific cosmological model by demonstrating that the volvelle was a product of the visual rhetoric of early modern astronomical diagrammatic schemes. As a result, the materiality of the volvelle, and the resulting expectations for its capabilities set by contemporary readers, was the underlying cause of the downfall of the volvelle, rather than any scientific shortcoming of the instrument genre itself.
Paper: “From Dorpat to Yerkes: Visual Record of the Influence of the Fraunhofer’s Refractor on Nineteenth-century U.S. Telescope Design; Some Starter Thoughts”
Trudy E. Bell, independent scholar
Joseph von Fraunhofer’s groundbreaking Dorpat refractor completed in 1824—the earliest example of what is now known as the German equatorial mount—was hugely influential on the design and general morphology of mountings for nineteenth-century U.S. refracting telescopes, from the 6.5-inch Merz refractor mounted at the Philadelphia High School Observatory in 1840 to the 40-inch Clark at Yerkes Observatory mounted in 1897. But these subsequent refractors were not identical to the Dorpat instrument, because the Dorpat refractor—as brilliant as it was—had structural engineering aspects that did not scale well at greater apertures, or that were fundamental design shortcomings that later astronomers and instrument makers sought to improve or to customize. Moreover, alterations were essential not only for visual observing but also for the new technologies of spectroscopy and photography later in the nineteenth century. Quite apart from any engineering plans that may have been drawn, a history of many design changes is preserved in details of engravings or photographs of completed refracting telescopes published in periodicals, instrument catalogues, and books at the time, as well as written descriptions of changes and their practical observational usefulness.
Paper: “‘Removing’ Telescopic Colors: Making and Marketing Achromatic Lenses”
Marvin Bolt, Bibliotheca Hertziana—Max Planck Institue for Art History
Histories of astronomy include a standard telescopic tale: John Dollond invented and patented the achromatic lens to overcome the colors ruining telescopic observations. These histories have drawn primarily from textual resources. Our examination of material culture urges us to reconsider this story by asking a simple question: what was the problem for which the achromatic telescope was a solution?
By exploring what historical actors actually experienced, including by looking through seventeenth- and eighteenth-century telescopes, the standard narrative shifts considerably. A key element in the rewriting is a simple demonstration device that accomplished four tasks. First, it created a vivid experience of the (supposed) achromatic problem. Second, it illustrated the process by which Dollond solved that putative problem. Third, it enabled an experience of Dollond’s solution. Finally, it brilliantly marketed Dollond’s wares. In sum, this device visualizes both problem and solution, making a compelling case for an innovative instrument whose benefits were not necessarily noticeable.
Session: “The Space of Knowledge: Technologies of Transmission at the Adler Planetarium”
Organizer: Katie Boyce-Jacino, Adler Planetarium. Participants: Charissa Sedor, Adler Planetarium; Jane Kanter, Adler Planetarium; Orilla Fetro, Adler Planetarium
The Adler Planetarium has, since its opening in 1930, served as a site for the transmission of astronomical knowledge for a broad public. The Adler, unique among American planetaria, features not only the planetarium itself, but also a museum that considers both contemporary space science and the history of astronomy in one place. This arrangement has historically allowed for dynamic pedagogical techniques that encourage visitors to make connections across space and time. The experience of the planetarium is an intensely sensory one—the visitor encounters astronomical knowledge visually, tactilely, and spatially. This experience is shaped by both historical and emergent technologies that guide the transmission of knowledge to the visitor.
This panel considers the epistemic role of visual practices within the space of the planetarium. As a whole, these talks argue that the transmission of astronomical knowledge is shaped by technological contexts—in particular who can access this knowledge and how they do so. These talks, by Adler experts in history, design, and technology, explore historical and contemporary practices in the planetarium for communicating astronomical concepts, and offer insights into future possibilities. Jane Kanter, the Adler’s librarian and archivist, will use archival collections of planetarium show art since the 1930s to explore how these shows evolved to meet changes in technology and audience expectations. Orilla Fetro, the Director of Exhibit Design and Production, will explain the use of 3D printing to transform the abstract into the physical, providing tactile models that enable newly accessible forms of interaction and overcome the limitations that plague two-dimensional representations of celestial structures. Finally, Charissa Sedor, Theater Technician, will discuss her recent work in immersive design, with a focus on the projection experience she designed for the Adler’s latest exhibit, which allows visitors to be surrounded by speculative exoplanet landscapes. This panel will conclude with opportunities to interact with some of the Adler’s 3D models and explore the new immersive space.
Saturday June 14 Workshop Papers and Panel (in presentation order)
Session: “Capturing the Stars: Visual and Digital Approaches to the History of Astronomy and Astrophysics”
Organizer: Molly C. Laumakis, University of Chicago. Participants: Richard Kron, University of Chicago; Andrea Twiss-Brooks, University of Chicago Library; Daniel Babnigg, University of Chicago
Since 2019, the Capturing the Stars Research Group at the University of Chicago has brought together faculty, students, and staff from the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the University of Chicago Library, and the Department of History to study the scientific and historical legacy of Yerkes Observatory. Building upon a general interest in the transformation of scientific practices in astronomy and astrophysics from the late nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, our work is united by a broader interest in the history of research methods and knowledge making practices across time and space. Utilizing the Online Cultural and Historical Research Environment (OCHRE) of the UChicago Forum for Digital Culture, the Stars group strives to make integral facets of the material and visual history of Yerkes Observatory accessible through digitization and data integration for both scientific and historical research. This history includes glass plates in a variety of forms that allow us to reconstruct and build upon the scientific work and broader educational aspirations of Yerkes Observatory achieved through developments in the visual technologies and products of astronomical study.
This panel highlights the visual practices of knowledge production and dissemination at Yerkes Observatory within the framework of the ongoing Capturing the Stars OCHRE project. Two case studies of glass plate technology, photographic lantern slides and the Barnard Series of glass plate photographs, will be presented in the context of their individual contributions to astronomical knowledge production in both historic and contemporary research in astronomy and the humanities.
Paper: “Producing and Transmitting Knowledge through Observational Logbooks at Mount Wilson Observatory”
Eun-Joo Ahn, Yale University
Logbooks are ubiquitous in modern observational or experimental practice. Mount Wilson Observatory was no exception, and a variety of observational logbooks from its early years have survived. Some belonged to individuals, while others to a group of observers using a particular telescope and photograph setup. The night assistant for the reflector telescope was responsible for the telescope logbook. These various logbooks not only serve as a means of producing and transmitting scientific knowledge, they also give voice to the less prominent scientific workers. In the individual or group logbooks, astronomers kept records of detailed information that included the object photographed, exposure time, and plate type. These records connect the photographic plates preserved in the vaults of the Carnegie Observatories to the scientific knowledge acquired and circulated. As the keepers of the telescope logbooks, night assistants (for the reflectors) and solar observers (for the solar telescopes) recorded the idiosyncracies of instruments, fixes and maintenance done on the instruments, the weather, users and visitors, and “remarks” they saw as important. The telescope logbooks became manuals to night assistants that contained tips on coaxing the telescope to positions or things to watch out for when attaching spectrographs. These logbooks not only serve as a demographic record of who used the telescope, but are voices of the less prominent scientific workers, such as night assistants or daily solar observers, giving insight into their lives up on the mountain, how they interacted with astronomers, and how they participated in scientific knowledge making.
Paper: “Architectural Drawing as a Medium for Solar Observation and Inquiry”
Madison Cook, Virginia Tech
This presentation explores the role of visual practices in the production and transmission of knowledge about light, shadow, and solar geometry in architectural design. Through a series of interactive, interdisciplinary experiments, architecture students engage with environmental phenomena—specifically the movement of the sun—not as passive elements, but as active, integral forces that shape the built environment. These experiments serve as visual tools for inquiry, linking architectural design to principles of solar observation and environmental analysis.
A central feature of this approach is the Shadow Drafting Tool, a teaching instrument I developed to enable students to geometrically construct and analyze shadows within orthographic drawings. This tool functions not only as a medium for precise technical skill but also as a mechanism for conceptualizing the interaction of light and architectural forms. The work expands further through three key experiments: shadow projection mapping, the design and testing of light instruments inspired by sundials, and the creation of Light-Observation Observation Towers that choreograph sunlight over specific latitudes. These exercises merge scientific observation with creative architectural speculation, allowing students to test and refine their understanding of environmental forces in real-world contexts.
In these experiments, visual representations—whether through geometric drawings, models, or physical structures—become epistemic devices for understanding the dynamics of light and time. They transform students’ perceptions of architectural design, emphasizing the value of environmental intelligence and fostering a deeper integration of observational practices with creative processes. This interdisciplinary approach demonstrates how visual reasoning and representation, rooted in solar geometry, can function as powerful tools for both inquiry and design, inviting students to reflect on the shifting role of visual practices in architecture’s relationship with the natural world.
Paper: “Images, Advocacy, and the Making of Space Astronomy”
Robert Smith, University of Alberta
The biggest sorts of space astronomy represent extremely large-scale science. These projects—the leading examples are the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope—have cost several billions of dollars each to reach space and then consumed billions more to support their scientific operations. Given the political economy of the United States in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century, establishing and keeping wide public support has therefore been essential for the construction and operation of these space observatories. In this paper, I will examine the crucial role that images of astronomical objects have played in establishing this support. That is, I will scrutinize the role of scientific images in mediating between astronomers and their political patrons and the public audience for space astronomy.
Paper: “Max Wolf’s Role in the Production and Dissemination of Astronomical Lantern Slides”
Torsten Bendl, University of Regensburg
In 1891, Max Wolf was the first to discover a minor planet using the photographic method, establishing himself as a pioneer in astrophotography in Germany. His images gained widespread attention beyond academic circles, for example by popularizers of astronomy such as Robert Henseling and commercial publishers such as Liesegang and E. A. Seemann. The latter aimed to reproduce his photographs to make them commercially available, especially for public observatories and other institutions of science popularization. This talk examines the production and dissemination of Wolf’s astrophotographs as lantern slides, focusing on the tensions between scientific image ideals, public education aesthetics, and commercial interests. It explores how Wolf’s skepticism toward the quality of reproduced slides contrasted with the popularizers’ and publishers’ objectives, revealing differing views on the role of visual material in communicating astronomical knowledge. By situating lantern slides at the intersection of science, education, and industry, the talk sheds light on the evolving visual practices in astronomy and their implications for the production and transmission of knowledge
Paper: “Astronomical Lantern Lecturing as a Political Strategy in Australian Observatories in the Early Twentieth Century”
Ian Tasker, University of Melbourne
Visualization has long been central to astronomical practice. At least until recent times, the science has been practiced by capturing and analyzing images. Yet the visual practices of astronomy go far beyond this. The performance of astronomy for the public has also revolved around visualization, often in ways that are completely disconnected from observational imagery. Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, the lantern slide was one of the major technologies of this public performance. The use of lantern-slide lecturing in this period reveals many different motivations.
One of the key roles of astronomical lantern lecturing was to build public and political support for professional astronomers. There are few clearer instances of this than the performances of (William) Ernest Cooke (1863–1947), Government Astronomer of New South Wales and Professor of Astronomy at the University of Sydney. The importance of lantern lecturing in this case is revealed most starkly by its failure—Cooke was removed from his post by the New South Wales Government in 1926 and the Sydney Observatory itself was nearly abolished. In his final years in the post, as he was attempting to save his position, Cooke devoted considerable energies to lantern slide lecturing and his collection of images. Appeals to the public for support are a well-trodden path for scientists—and many others—towards gaining political advantage. This article examines the centrality of astronomical lantern lecturing in the endeavors of Ernest Cooke.
Paper: “How Mechanical Instruments Replace Part of Calculations: Calculating the Planet's Ecliptical Latitude Using an Equatorium”
Mostafa Yavari, University of Tehran
The equatorium is one of the astronomical instruments that might have Greek origin. This instrument evolved in the Islamicate world and went through its final evolution in medieval Europe. Therefore, it may be considered as an instrument that shows the transmission of astronomical knowledge among different cultures.
The equatorium was used as an astronomical calculation instrument to make it easier to find the positions of the planets. The solution of the innovators seems simple for this purpose: we simulate the Ptolemaic planetary models on the instrument, and as a result, we can obtain the planet’s ecliptical longitude.
The planet’s ecliptical latitude is a little different: the main basis of the planet’s latitude model is the three-dimensionalization of the planetary models, while the equatorium is a two-dimensional plate. As a result, it is not possible to implement the planet’s latitude model on it. Here the solution is to depend more on astronomical tables (zijes). But the equatorium will help the astronomer in one more way: numerical calculations are done to find the various values input of the final latitude tables. For this purpose, it is necessary that not the main part of the equatorium, but the rulers that come with it, are calibrated in a way that they can perform sexagesimal calculations.
Jamshīd al-Kāshī, in the introduction to the equatorium he invented with the name of Ṭabaq al-manāṭiq (plate of deferents), introduced it as an instrument for calculating the planet’s longitude and latitude. And in a chapter, he proposed a solution to calculate the planet’s latitude using it.
This article briefly introduces this instrument and its solution for calculating the planet'’ latitude using a two-dimensional plate. It shows that during the calculation of the planet’s latitude, which of the calculation steps are done by this instrument, and which are done by astronomical tables.
Paper: “Geared Anomalies: The Digital Re-animation of a War-Damaged Renaissance Equatorium”
Michael Korey, Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon (Dresden State Art Collections)
Ptolemy’s theory to predict the motion of the planets was received and refined over many centuries by successive generations of mathematicians and astronomers writing in Greek, Arabic, and Latin, for whom the theoretical models largely served for the computation of tables to predict planetary positions. At least since the eleventh century, a class of specialized, analog mathematical instruments known as equatoria emerged alongside these tables. They consisted of rotatable graduated disks and radially turnable arms or threads (volvelles), with which planetary positions could readily be found. Such instruments offered a visual representation of Ptolemy's geometric models and a means for approximate calculation of the planets’ positions. Certain of these instruments used metal gears to realize interconnected components of the desired motion. Next to nothing of these early geared mechanisms survives, so that the rediscovery or re-analysis of each such instrument is a cause for interest. One such geared equatorium made of brass, with a simultaneous display of the ‘true’ zodiacal position of all seven classical planets, was sent to the Saxon court by the Coburg mathematician Nicolaus Valerius in 1564. After it was caught up in the bombing of Dresden in 1945, it survives only as a disfigured, molten fragment, but even before World War II it was never subject to a comprehensive analysis. The richly illustrated talk describes the many steps undertaken using digital means to analyze and reconstruct what this equatorium once showed—and thereby to suggest for what purpose it was made.
Paper: “Robert H. Baker: The Illustration of Astronomy”
Rudi Paul Lindner, University of Michigan
Robert H. Baker was professor of astronomy at the University of Illinois from 1923 to 1951. His research publications were modest in number, and the equipment at his disposal did not offer opportunity for an important program. However, he was a respected teacher and a successful author. He wrote two textbooks for undergraduates, three books for a general adult audience, and a children’s guide. It is these books that establish his reputation as a pioneer in the use of certain types of illustration to bring public attention to astronomy. More Americans have owned his astronomy books than those of any other author. I propose to explain why and to suggest how he influenced the illustration of astronomy.
Paper: “Hubble and Huxley: Hollywood Stars and Empiricists”
Mahmoud Jalloh, St. John’s College
The astronomer Edwin Hubble and the novelist and public intellectual Aldous Huxley enjoyed what might initially seem like an improbable friendship. However, biographies and archival materials show that the two men enjoyed a very intimate relationship indeed. In this talk I will describe their friendship in the context of the golden age of Hollywood and the two World Wars. I will make an argument that their friendship had an intellectual core, a shared orientation as empiricists. The role of this empiricism in both Hubble’s astronomical work and Huxley’s varied scientific investigations will be explored.
Paper: “From the Laboratory to the Moon”
David DeVorkin, National Air and Space Museum (emeritus)
A brief introduction to the scientific life of a celebrated Black scientist, George R. Carruthers, who built the first astronomical observatory on the moon and worked to inspire underserved students to pursue science and engineering.
Saturday June 14 Workshop Banquet Lecture
Talk: “Exploring the Computational History of Astronomy”
Matteo Valleriani, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
The computational history of astronomy bridges the gap between historical analysis and modern computational techniques, offering new pathways to study the evolution of astronomical knowledge, practices, and instruments. This lecture explores how computational methods—such as complex systems theory, data modeling, machine learning, and explainable artificial intelligence—can deepen our understanding of historical astronomical knowledge. It also addresses key methodological challenges, including the integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches and the substantial scaling up of research projects. Through a range of case studies, the lecture ultimately aims to illustrate the transformative potential of computational techniques in reimagining the history of astronomy in the digital age. Special emphasis will be placed on how the integration of machine learning with historical disciplines may reshape the relationship between micro- and macro-history.
|
