“To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.”
– Stephen Hawking, Astrophysicist
Two dozen wide-eyed stargazers, from toddlers to retirees, were treated to a lesson in the heavens Thursday.
The guide, Humboldt’s Mike Myer, enthralled the group at the Iola Public Library with tales of learning about everything from faraway galaxies to solar and lunar eclipses.
It was the largest such crowd for a library lecture this year, organizers said.
Those who partook were nothing but astonished.
Myer opened the 90-minute program with a bit of a history lesson.
In early 1608, Dutchman Hans Lippershey, a local eyeglass maker, discovered that holding lenses together would greatly magnify images.
By putting the lenses in a tube, he had invented a refracting telescope.
As word of his invention spread, Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei devised his own telescope, using the same design as had Lippershey, but stacking thicker and more lenses to increase magnification, Myer noted.
“Galileo modified his own design, so he gets a lot of the credit,” Myer said.
But as larger telescopes were built, observers noted two issues.
The longer telescopes became unwieldy to use, and once a telescope’s focal length grew, colors began to look skewed.
“The early telescopes worked, but they did not bend the colors of the light at the same distance” Myer explained. “When you looked at a planet, it may have been red on top, blue on the bottom.”
Roughly 60 years later, in 1668, Sir Isaac Newton of England entered the fray.
Newton devised a telescope using a pair of mirrors, the first with a concave shape at the bottom of the tube, which in turn reflected the light to a second mirror to redirect the light through the eyepiece. Thus, the reflecting or Newtonian telescope was born.
Those telescopes grew in popularity, largely because the size of the mirror, and a subsequent magnifying eyepiece, could draw greater detail, and original color of whatever celestial body was being viewed, Myer explained.
As an aside, religion played a large role in early astronomy. Galileo, in fact, was charged with heresy and forced to renounce his teachings for suggesting the earth revolved around the sun, and not otherwise — in clear violation of church orthodoxy.
Upon his conviction, Galileo infamously stomped his foot to the ground and bellowed “E pur si muove” — “and yet it moves.”
“It was his way of saying, ‘I was forced to do this, and it’s not right,’” Myer said.
Many early astronomers were hired by kings and governments to monitor the sky for comets in particular, which legend held were signs of pending doom.
What they discovered, however, was a world of wonder.
“They realized the moon was not smooth,” Myer said. “They could see craters and mountains, and craters within craters.”
The darker areas of the moon, originally thought to be seas, were later to be determined as nothing more than darker shades of rock.
Yet, the “seas” monikers remained, Myer noted, such as the Sea of Tranquility — landing spot of Apollo 11.
WITH THAT bit of history out of the way, Myer showed off several examples of his astrophotography, from near and far galaxies, examples of nebulae and a spectacular series of images he captured during a solar eclipse during sunset in rural Texas a few years back.
Myer also fielded questions from the audience.
Pluto was “demoted” as a planet within the past 20 years, and is now considered a dwarf planet.
“If anything, it’s more like a comet than a planet,” Myer said.
Comets are different from meteors, because comets orbit the sun, and emit a tail consisting of ice and dust that evaporate as the comet heats. Most meteors are likely the size of a grain of sand that burn up as they enter the earth’s atmosphere, creating shooting stars.
“It would be a bad day if a comet entered the earth’s atmosphere,” Myer noted, speculating it was likely a comet striking the earth that wiped out the dinosaurs millions of years ago.
The sun, like all other stars in the universe, will eventually use up its energy and explode into a supernova because it will lack the strength to retain its shape. But earthlings won’t have to worry about it for a while. Such a scenario is still millions of years from becoming reality.
MYER’S presentation concluded with a stargazing program in the library parking lot.
Spectators were treated to close-up views of the moon, Jupiter and its four moons clearly visible, and Saturn and its distinctive rings.
Myer also welcomed the audience to check out the library’s own 6-inch Newtonian telescope, donated two years ago by Myer. He also donated telescopes to libraries in Humboldt and Chanute for public use.
Each telescope also has star and field charts, a user’s manual and various eyepieces to magnify images.
To inquire about using the telescope in Iola, call (620) 365-3262.
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