Category: Cosmos

In 1909, the eminent astronomer, Percival Lowell, made this photograph of Mars, in support of his speculation that there were canals on the planet, perhaps remnants of former life. A member of the wealthy Lowell family of Boston,in 1894 Lowell founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Located nearly 7000 feet above sea level, this was the first observatory to be placed deliberately at a remote, elevated site. In 1930, Pluto was discovered at the Lowell Observatory.

Lowell devoted his career to the study of Mars, publishing three books about the planet, focusing on the canals and the possibility of life. In the 1960s, NASA’s Mariner missions and the Mariner 9 orbiter in 1972 recorded a cratered surface. The canals that Lowell theorized were built by a desperate culture to tap the ice caps for water on a drying planet are today considered to be an optical illusion.

Earl C. Slipher joined the Lowell Observatory staff in 1908, later serving as director, Like Lowell, he specialized in the study of Mars, later published a book of photographs of the planet. The photographs in Middlebury’s collection were most likely acquired by Middlebury Professor Ernest Calvin Bryant, perhaps after a visit to the Lowell Observatory.  They were saved from being consigned to oblivion by Frank Winkler, Gamiel Painter Bicentennial Professor Emeritus of Physics.

Scroll down for a video commentary by Frank Winkler on Percival Lowell.

In 2012, the Middlebury College Museum of Art purchased two photographs by Chris McCaw, one taken at the Arctic Circle and this one showing the rising of the sun at the equator.

Chris McCaw describes the process of making the photograph: “One of my favorite things about this series is how it is so inherently linked to the natural cycles. In order to make a piece like this, I had to take a camera all the way to the equator, around the time of the spring equinox. Only then could I get the sun rising perpendicular to the horizon. I traveled to the Galapagos Islands in particular to witness the effect over water.”[footnote]Collier Brown, “Chris McCaw: A Blister in the Sun, OD review/21^st Editions https://theodreview.com/2016/06/07/chris-mccaw-a-blister-in-the-sun-1-of-2/ VI.6.1[/footnote]

See more of McCaw’s work and listen to Tevan Goldberg’s musical composition based on McCaw’s Sunburned series:

In 1960, the Sierra Club published This is the American Earth, the first in a series of “exhibition format” books that would launch the club onto a national stage. Although largely featuring western landscapes by Ansel Adams, the first section of the book, “Brief Tenant,” opened with a Palomar Observatory photograph of a spiral nebula that placed the “American Earth” into a galactic context. The text by Nancy Newhall tried to give poetic form to galactic creation: “In myth, in dream, this living dust remembers chaos, the drift through endless night, the longing to cohere,—the shock, the winds, the vast light of Creation. Was it seven billion years ago this planet formed from a cosmic cloud?”[footnote]Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall, This is the American Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1960), n.p.[/footnote]

While Adams and Newhall could use a photograph of a spiral galaxy to stand in for the creation of the entire universe, in fact each spiral galaxy is unique. The spiral galaxy known to astronomers as M 6814, photographed by Hubble in May 2016, is a type of galaxy called a “Seyfert galaxy,” typified by very active centers that emit strong bursts of radiation. According to NASA, scientists suspect that the center of M 6814 is the home of a supermassive black hole with a mass about 18 million times that of the sun.[footnote]”Hubble Spies a Spiral Snowflake,” May 13, 2016. https://sites.middlebury.edu/landandlens/ Accessed February 17, 2017.[/footnote] In the large clouds of gas that make up its arms are many newly formed blue stars.

In her fascinating book, Picturing the Cosmos: Hubble Space Telescope Images and the Astronomical Sublime, Elizabeth Kessler argues that the astronomers and image processors who first established the look of Hubble-generated images were strongly influenced by paintings of the American West by Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran, among others, as well as photographs of sublime mountains and deserts by nineteenth-century frontier photographers such as Timothy O’Sullivan. Moreover, she documents how the Hubble Heritage Project members admired the work of Ansel Adams, even nick-naming a set of black and white Hubble images the “Ansel Adams Gallery.”[footnote]Elizabeth A. Kessler, Picturing the Cosmos: Hubble Space Telescope Images and the Astronomical Sublime (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), p. 55.[/footnote] She argues that the notion of the sublime, so important for nineteenth-century landscape art, has been recast by Hubble images into a visual language of the “astronomical sublime,” codified in awe-inspiring views of a vast, expanding universe.

Listen and watch as Professor Frank Winkler and Jonathan Kemp discuss this photograph:

In 2014 contemporary photographer Chris McCaw was awarded the Emerging Icon in Photography Award from the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography. McCaw’s work combines a unique technical process with a view of our planet’s relationship with the Sun.

Listen as Middlebury student Justin Cho describes McCaw’s work:

On April 24, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched. After repairs in orbit in 1993, the telescope has gone on to reshape our perception of the cosmos with images of nearby planets, the birth of stars, and the farthest reaches of the universe.

The images associated with the Hubble’s voyage are not taken as standard photographs. They are computer-generated images that begin with incoming black and white data from multiple cameras that is then post-processed as a composited image. Colors are assigned to wavelengths of light that are invisible to the human eye.

In creating these images, astronomers balance the need to convey scientifically valid information and the larger public appeal of aesthetically enticing pictures of distant and even invisible phenomena. These images have found their way onto calendars and screen savers, posters and book covers, shaping our expectations for a new age of astronomical photographs.

Since its formation in 1997, the Hubble Heritage Project, a group of astronomers and image processors, has released a new image almost every month. They also provide do-it-yourself instructions for amateurs to do their own image processing from Hubble data. Their pictures have publicized Hubble’s findings to a broad public and provided popular support for the telescope.

This photograph shows the extreme past of the universe, a few 100 million years after the Big Bang. According to NASA’s website, the image was made with the addition of ultraviolet data to cover the entire range of wavelengths available to Hubble’s cameras. Ultraviolet data enables astronomers to study star formation between 5 and 10 billion light-years distant.[footnote]“Astronomy Picture of the Day,” June 5, 2014 https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140605.html. Accessed February 16, 2017.[/footnote]

Professor Frank Winkler and Jonathan Kemp discuss the photograph:

One of the most famous Hubble images is a view of the Eagle Nebula dubbed “The Pillars of Creation.” Originally produced in 1995, the view showed details of three columns of gas, as NASA’s website put it, “bathed in the scorching ultraviolet light from a cluster of young, massive stars in a small region of the Eagle Nebula, or M16.” This iconic image of the wonders of Hubble exploration appeared on tee shirts and pillows, and even a postage stamp.[footnote]“Hubble Goes High Def to Revisit the Iconic ‘Pillars of Creation,’ January 5, 2015. http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2015-01/110-american-astronomical-society-meeting. Accessed February 16, 2017.[/footnote]

To celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the telescope, Hubble revisited the site, sending back data for sharper and broader images. Photographed in both visible and near-infrared light, the pillars appear as evanescent shapes containing newborn stars. As astronomers pieced together the exposures, they were amazed by the detail that was visible for the first time.

Astronomer Paul Scowen of Arizona State University at Tempe observed of the new images: “There is only one thing that can light up a neighborhood like this: massive stars kicking out enough horsepower in ultraviolet light to ionize the gas clouds and make them glow. Nebulous star-forming regions like M16 are the insterstellar neon signs that say ‘We just made a bunch of massive stars here.’ “[footnote]Hubble Goes High Def to Revisit the Iconic ‘Pillars of Creation,’ January 5, 2015. http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2015-01/110-american-astronomical-society-meeting. Accessed Feburary 16, 2017.[/footnote]

Several different Hubble exposures were combined to create the 2014 visible light view. The Hubble website explains, “Streamers of gas can be seen bleeding off the pillars as the intense radiation heats and evaporates it into space. Denser regions of the pillars are shadowing material beneath them from the powerful radiation. Stars are being born deep inside the pillars, which are made of cold hydrogen gas laced with dust. The pillars are part of a small region of the Eagle Nebula, a vast star-forming region 6,500 light-years from Earth. The colors in the image highlight emission from several chemical elements. Oxygen emission is blue, sulfur is orange, and hydrogen and nitrogen are green.”[footnote]“2014 Hubble WFC3/UVIS Image of M16,” January 5, 2015. http://hubblesite.org/image/3471/news/91-astronomical. Accessed February 16, 2017.[/footnote]The near-infrared view reveals newly formed stars behind the nebula and inside the pillars not seen in the visible light image.

View this public domain “Hubblecast” to learn more about the photograph:

From the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik in 1957 to the last Apollo mission to the moon in 1972, the Space Race was associated with tremendous advances in technology. At the same time, however, it was linked to a growing awareness of the Earth as an increasingly vulnerable environment.

The shock of the atomic bomb and the rise of Cold War fears of global annihilation led to serious consideration of colonies in space, not only by scientists and philosophers, but also media figures including Ray Bradbury and Marshall McLuhan. Revising the language of nineteenth-century exploration and expansion, newly elected John F. Kennedy described a “new frontier,” beyond which lay, in his words, “uncharted areas of science and space.”

While suspicious of technology in general, early environmentalists were not particularly hostile to the space program. Perhaps this is because, as funding dwindled for space research, NASA officials began to ally their efforts with the environmental wonders of Cape Canaveral. With the donation of a large tract of land to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, NASA shifted emphasis from its technological achievements to its role within the larger environmental movement. Publicity materials showed rockets framed by palm trees, and postcards of the Kennedy Space Center paired technological advances with alligators and eagles’ nests.

As fears of overpopulation and pollution began to replace earlier nuclear anxiety, the space program tapped into the desire for solutions that extended beyond the limits of the planet. Photographic images that looked back to the Earth from space underscored both the unity and the fragility of the planet as a whole, while the notion of space as the “final frontier” caught the popular imagination precisely at a time of social divides. Cosmologist Carl Sagan warned “the Earth is almost fully explored and culturally homogenized. There are few places to which the discontented cutting edge of mankind can emigrate….Space cities provide a kind of America in the skies….”[footnote]Robert Poole, Earthrise (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008) p. 163.[/footnote]

But this nationalist view was countered by the “whole Earth” mentality that fueled the first Earth Day in 1970s. By the early 1970s, the notion of “Spaceship Earth” had become associated with the environmental movement. Rather than acting as an icon of the magnificent technological achievements of the space program, the “blue marble” photograph taken on the last Apollo mission became the most powerful symbol of our need to protect the Earth’s finite resources and complex ecological systems. Appearing on flags and buttons, posters and book covers, a view of the planet only actually seen by a handful of humans has evolved into a symbol that resonates even more powerfully in today’s age of global climate change.

In 1950, astronomer Fred Hoyle predicted that a photograph of the whole Earth would unleash a new idea as powerful as any in history. On Christmas Eve, 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 finished its fourth orbit around the moon. As they emerged from the moon’s dark side, they saw the Earth rise before them. Astronaut William Anders remembered the sight of “…a very fragile looking Earth, a very delicate looking Earth, I was immediately almost overcome by the thought that here we came all this way to the Moon, and yet the most significant thing we’re seeing is our own home planet, the Earth.”[footnote]Robert Poole, Earthrise (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 2.[/footnote] The astronauts reached for their cameras.

The next day, poet Archibald MacLeish in his front page New York Times essay, “Riders on the Earth,” reflected on the profound impact of the sight. MacLeish wrote, “To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold – brothers who know now they are truly brothers.”[footnote]Archibald MacLeish, “A Reflection: Riders on the Earth Together, Brothers in Eternal Cold,” The New York Times, December 25, 1968, p. 1.[/footnote]

In subsequent years, the photograph of the Earth rising over the surface of the moon taken by Anders would be one of the most indelible images to emerge from the Apollo program; as writer Norman Cousins told members of Congress in 1975: “what was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the Moon, but that they set eye on the Earth.”[footnote]William Irwin Thompson, “The deeper meaning of Apollo 17,” New York Times, January 1, 1973, p. 13.[/footnote]

With the photograph came a new reverence for the environment. As Robert Poole, author of the fascinating book Earthrise, writes, “Looking back, it is possible to see that Earthrise marked the tipping point, the moment when a sense of the space age flipped from what it meant for space to what it meant for Earth.”[footnote]Robert Poole, Earthrise (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 8.[/footnote] Fifteen months after the photograph was taken, the first Earth Day was celebrated. Four years after Apollo 8, members of the last Apollo mission brought back a photograph that was to be even more famous: the iconic “blue marble” view of the entire earth, an image that has been called the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.

While colonies in space were thought of as a way out of nuclear holocaust during the Space Race, today some propose them as a final resort to the inevitable environmental destruction of the Earth. As scientists and activists predict the decline of the planet, will our attention turn from the Earth to other planetary systems?

In 1840, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a brief essay about the new photographic invention called the daguerreotype. This form of photography had been unveiled to the world in the previous year at a joint meeting of the French Academies of Art and Science. Given Poe’s fascination with the mysterious and horrific, it is surprising to find him praising the scientific applications of the new medium, including “the drawing of a correct lunar chart…since the rays of this luminary are found to be appreciated by the plate.”[footnote]Edgar Allan Poe, “The Daguerreotype,” in Alan Trachtenberg, ed., Classic Essays on Photography (New Haven: Leete’s Island Books, 1980), p. 5.[/footnote]

A little over a decade later, the team of John Adams Whipple, a Boston daguerreotypist, and George P. Bond, son of the head of the Harvard Observatory, successfully produced detailed daguerreotypes of the moon. This was a complicated process. Since the moon and the Earth are in motion relative to each other, either very short exposures or a tracking device are necessary to avoid blurring the subject. Using Harvard’s “Great Refractor,” at that time the largest telescope in the world, they spent three years overcoming numerous technical, logistical, and meteorological challenges before they produced their first detailed images. As the author of the logbook for the telescope noted, the results gave “a better representation of the Lunar surface than any engraving of it that I have ever seen.”[footnote]M. Susan Barger, “The Moon, 6 August 1851,” The Christian A. Johnson Memorial Gallery Annual Report for the Year 1989 (Middlebury: Middlebury College, 1989), n.p.[/footnote] Just as photographs would be used to visually map the American frontier, photographs like this one were seen as more accurate maps of the lunar surface.

In 1851, one of their lunar images was shown at the Crystal Palace exhibition in London, where it generated great excitement among the European scientific community. The Whipple-Bond team also made daguerreotypes of a partial solar eclipse, the star Vega, and the double star Castor. Their dedication and perseverance paved the way for the union of art and science that has inspired much subsequent astronomical imaging, especially the remarkable images produced from data gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope.