"Harold Hill's achievement is to awaken us to the stark, compelling beauty of the moon, with its mighty ringwalls and glistening highlands. Each image tells its own story. Each is constructed with precision and attention to detail."
- From "A Portfolio of Lunar Drawings"
"To categorise Harold Hill as an amateur astronomer is too bland. It conveys nothing of the man who, for almost half a century has assiduously charted the play of light and shade across the surface of the moon in a series of exquisite drawings."
- Richard Baum
"I observe because I like it. Isn't that enough?"
- Harold Hill
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Harold Hill passed away yesterday.
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Comments [1]
So my wife has an aunt, a great, great aunt, who is now 101. Goldie led quite a life. She was pretty much in the thick of the LA scene from the late 30s, during the war years and the 50s, finally moving back to St. Paul in the late 70s.
She never married, and is in a nursing home now, her mind gone, and all of her peers dead already. Her possessions have pretty much been distributed to other family members.
We have some of that stuff, and in a box of photos I found the picture above. From the note on the back, the woman in the photo is the sister of Goldie's longtime friend/boyfriend (we're not really sure if they were lovers or not).
Obviously, the dome of the 200 inch Hale telescope caught my attention.
Alas, there is no date on the photo. Judging from the construction debris littered about in the photo, I would guess that this was taken sometime in the 40s.
The interesting thing about the picture is not the dome, or whether or not the 200 was in place, but what the hell were they doing up there? I mean I know that building that scope was in the popular minds of people and its progress recorded in the papers and such, but it was still a haul out there at that period in time. It wasn't a tourist attraction. It was really out in the sticks of LA.
Here is what is says on the back:
Margorie in view. Entrance to observatory on right - beautiful marble floors, inlaid linoleums thruout - a high spot of interest for visitors.
It makes me wonder, because their interest seems to be on the *floors*, if the 200 had been installed at the time. I should look up the timeline for building the observatory...
But this is Goldie, and her circle of friends, making the picnic road trip out to see the new scope. We also have photos of them before they moved out there making the same kinds of trips. I mean, you want to take a day trip, need a destination, why not go see the cool new scope?
It must have been pretty amazing...
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Light snow swirls outside the window, blowing in the stiff January winds. Occasionally the snow lets up and I can make out the sun's disk, but right now it's solid gray. It's still insufferably cold, about 9F (-13C).
Yet, even with the cold and snow, today I am inspired to begin comet hunting again.
I came upon the site of Tsutomu Seki, of Ikeya-Seki fame. For the next two hours I worked my way through his site, reading his journals and looking at photos.
Tsutomu Seki
At least the moon is full... And while I wait, I'll daydream of warm nights on The Farm, the sound of cicadas and the occasional coyote in the distance, the smell of prairie plants and wildflowers around me, of moving stones to define my observing "space," and of the quiet stillness as stars slowly turn overhead.
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I had the opportunity to take a private tour of Yerkes observatory, which I could not really miss for a number of reasons, though it was proving to be a long, trying weekend and I was tired.
We drove down to Lake Geneva from Minneapolis for my wife's uncle's wedding. It was raining and kind of cold, and on the way we got the news of Paul Wellstone's death. Both my wife and I liked and respected the senator, and news of the plane crash was very difficult for us. I had the pleasure of meeting Paul once, though the circumstances were less than ideal. In the spring of 2001, while I was unemployed, Granite Falls, a city about 3 hours south west of here, was in serious danger of flooding catastrophically. The water of the Minnesota River was being held back by an 18ft sandbag wall, and rising. Should the water break the wall or get over it, the town was a goner. Because I was unemployed and wanting to do something, I hopped a bus down there at 6 am and proceeded to fill sandbags for the next 10 hours after arriving. While doing this, Paul came around, shook some hands and thanked us for coming to help.
But beside shaking his hand, he was an important voice in our government. I still can't believe he's gone.
So, Lake Geneva. The bride, it seems, is a quilting friend of a staffer at the Observatory, and arranged for the wedding party to be given a private tour after the groom's dinner. About 6 of us went, myself, my father-in-law, and my wife's grandmother, with the rest from the bride's side. We arrived about 8 pm, alas under cloudy skies.
I was mostly interested in references to Barnard, though I realize that others were scientifically greater than he. It was still neat to put all the pieces together. A few years ago I'd read the history of this facility, and so I was somewhat familiar already with it's legacy.
There is little that I can write to describe the refractor. It's just incredible. I was also surprised to hear how little it is used, however, like only one night per month to photograph clusters for astrometry. It seems like some use or other could be found for it.
I enjoyed the offices and libraries - and I love the building itself. I had visions of spending a summer in one of the tiny dorm-style rooms and looking at comets through the 40-inch.
All-in-all it was a great diversion from the hustle and bustle of the weekend, and the bad news from home. I especially enjoyed my wife's grandmother, who talked about wanted to study astronomy at one point in her life. I told her there's no time like the present to get started.
[The image shows Hyakutake over the 40-inch telescope dome]
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Goodbye, Mr. Hyakutake. Thank you for providing me with inspiration and footsteps to follow.
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