The Sinking of the S.S. Robin Goodfellow
On July 25, 1944, German submarine U-862 torpedoed and sunk the S.S. Robin Goodfellow, a U.S. freighter en route from Cape Town, South Africa to New York. A nearby British motor merchant received the distress signal, but was unable to intervene. None of the eight officers, thirty-three crewmen, or twenty-eight…
Dorrit Hoffleit: Harvard Astronomers in the Second World War
*With this blog series, we also hope to instigate meaningful conversations about our institution’s history. We therefore invite you to comment on our posts and share your thoughts with us. Dorrit Hoffleit moved to Cambridge, MA as a young teenager. Her older brother, then only fourteen himself, was a new…
Visual Astronomy Display: August 2020
The Wolbach Library wishes good health to everyone during this unprecedented global crisis. See an animation of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover landing site; Fabio Pacucci explains the three-body problem; Comet NEOWISE as seen by spacecraft; How celestial bodies affect life under the sea; Why communication with extraterrestrial life might…
George Ellery Hale, Mount Wilson, and the Griffith Observatory
*With this blog series, we also hope to instigate meaningful conversations about our institution’s history. We therefore invite you to comment on our posts and share your thoughts with us. George Ellery Hale was born in Chicago, Illinois on June 29, 1868. After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, his…
Amateur Telescope-Making: Popular Astronomy and the Great Depression
*With this blog series, we also hope to instigate meaningful conversations about our institution’s history. We therefore invite you to comment on our posts and share your thoughts with us. The highly publicized return of Halley’s Comet in 1910 remains one of the most high-profile events of modern astronomy. Stories…
1920: Harvard Astronomy in the Aftermath of WW1
*With this blog series, we also hope to instigate meaningful conversations about our institution’s history. We therefore invite you to comment on our posts and share your thoughts with us. Jazz Age America, also known as the “Roaring Twenties” or the “Golden Age Twenties” in Europe, was born from the…
Summer Blog Series: An Updated Mission Statement
The prevailing theme behind the Library’s summer blog series has been to share snapshots in the history of the H.C.O. and S.A.O. where significant national or international events intersected with astrophysical scholarship. Due to the widespread closure of libraries and archives relating to Covid-19, much of our research for this…
“All Closed and Lenses Covered”: The Boyden Station in Arequipa
***In Fall 2019, the Wolbach Library displayed a small exhibit on the history of the Boyden Station entitled, “A Peculiar Sense of Proprietorship,” which directly addressed the imperialist actions of Harvard astronomers in Peru. The accompanying blog is still available here: https://wolba.ch/gazette/arequipa/. The blog and exhibit were adapted from Alex…
Visual Astronomy Display: July 2020
The Wolbach Library wishes good health to everyone during this unprecedented global crisis. Watch ten years of solar activity in this time lapse video from NASA; NASA, ESA, & JAXA unveil a satellite data-driven COVID-19 dashboard; Seeker explains the innovations of the new Perseverance Mars rover; Why does this young…
Poem from a Volunteer
The following poem was posted on one of the Talk Board pages for our Zooniverse project, Star Notes. Jean Laurie was kind enough to allow us to post her poem here. Harvard Ladies Order StarsFor Williamina Fleming From Argentina come stars packed in wooden crates,minute gleams, silver trails of hydrogensnapped…
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