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Perkins, The Objective View June 2008 Newsletter of the Northern Colorado Astronomical Society Nate Perkins, President Chamberlin Observatory Open House, dusk to 10 pm pres@ 970 207 0863 Jun 7, Jul 12, Aug 9, Sep 6 303 871 5172 Greg Halac, Vice President, Web Editor http://www.du.edu/~rstencel/Chamberlin/ vp@ 970 223 7210 Dave Chamness, Secretary and AL Correspondent Longmont Astronomical Society June 19 7 pm sec@ 970 482 1794 Dr. Emily Haynes, Phoenix Mars Lander FRCC, 2121 Miller Rd. See new web page design at: Robert Michael, Treasurer http://www.longmontastro.org/ treas@ 970 482 3615 Dan Laszlo, Newsletter Editor Cheyenne Astronomical Society June 20 9 pm objview@ Office 970 498 9226 Cheyenne Botanic Garden add ncastro.org to complete email address http://home.bresnan.net/~curranm/ Next Meeting: June 5, 7:00 pm May 1 Program Telescope Help Session and Johannes Kepler, His Life and Discoveries Annual NCAS Potluck Picnic by Nate Perkins, Ph.D., Avago Technologies Discovery Science Center Johannes Kepler wrestled tradition and personal tragedies to 703 E Prospect Ave, Fort Collins find truth by the scientific method. His lifetime from 1571 to 1630 was a period for recognition of the power of observation. http://www.ncastro.org/Sites/DiscoveryCtr.htm He was the first to publish natural laws in the scientific sense. His laws of planetary motion are universal, verifiable, and precise. He proposed tides are caused by the Moon, and that Club Brochure: http://www.ncastro.org/Contrib/2008_Brochure.pdf the Sun rotates. He coined the term “satellite.” He made NCAS Programs several novel contributions to optics. He used a pinhole camera to produce images, explained refraction and parallax in July 10 Black Holes David Chamness human eyes, developed eyeglass design, and recognized real, August 7 TBA Roger Appeldorn virtual and inverted images. He described the principles of Sept 4 Intl Yr of Astronomy Andrea Schweitzer telescope optics. He made calculations which are part of the basis for integral calculus. He developed a system for logarithms prior to Napier’s 1614 tables. He was a Dark Sky Observing Opportunities, Foxpark WY or RAC contemporary of Galileo and Shakespeare, experienced a great comet as a child, and was at the mercy of the Thirty Years June 6 to 8, 27 to 29 Check club-news that site is accessible. War which started in 1618. Religion dominated politics and science. Catholic states were challenged by Lutherans and Rocky Mountain National Park Starwatch Calvinists. The Copernican system was promoted versus the Upper Beaver Meadows traditional Ptolemaic system. Astronomy and astrology were largely indistinguishable. The Scientific Method was in its June 13, 27; Jul 4,11, 25; August 8, 22 infancy. New science depended on a fragile system of political patronage. War made life a struggle for all. Kepler is http://www.ncastro.org/Sites/RockyMtnNP.htm recalled as egotistical, stubborn and blunt. He had patience to invest years toward a single goal. He was also pragmatic and flexible enough to learn and adapt. He could recognize his errors. His birthplace in 1571 in Weil der Stadt, Wurttemburg, Other Events in the Holy Roman Empire placed him in peril. The Peace of Augsburg halted war over the Reformation (1517), but Little Thompson Observatory Star Night: religious tolerance was at the whim of the local ruler, and June 20 7:30 pm Dr. Suzanne Traub-Metlay there were over 200 German princes. Spain, France, http://www.starkids.org Denmark, and Sweden each wanted a piece of the German states. His grandfathers had served as mayors and were respected, but the families were in decline. Kepler described his father was an “immoral, rough, and quarrelsome soldier.” CSU Madison Macdonald Observatory Public Nights His mother was “a small, thin, and quarrelsome busybody who On East Drive, north of Pitkin Street was generally unpleasant.” Three of their six children died in Tuesdays after 8:30 pm if clear, when class is in session infancy. At age three, Kepler lived with Mother and her Tycho in Prague. Tycho only lived to 1601, his death at least parents at their inn for a year. She then went to join her in part due to mercury poisoning. Tycho made a deathbed husband for a year, while Kepler was chronically ill and nearly plea to Kepler to develop the Tychonic model, in which the died of smallpox. When he was 5 y/o, he moved with his planets orbit the Sun, but the Sun and Moon orbit the Earth. parents to Leonsberg and his father soon abandoned them. This was the religiously acceptable alternative since the Earth Kepler completed the Latin school in Wurttemburg between 5 remained stationary. Kepler instead modified Copernicus to 12 years of age. He then entered the convent-school at model with elliptical orbits. He replaced Tycho as Imperial Adelberg. He told others that he had been created by God to Mathemetician, appointed by Rudolph II. His major work in ponder the difficult things that others would turn away from. 1604 was on the “Optical Part of Astronomy.” He described He was eccentric, outspoken, adventurous. He credited his atmospheric refraction applied to eclipses, the reflection of parents with his early interest in the sky. He saw the Great light in flat and curved mirrors, and the inverse-square law for Comet of 1577, and the lunar eclipse of 1580. He received a light intensity. Using Tycho’s precise observations, Kepler scholarship for University of Tubingen in 1589, passed his discovered the elliptical orbit of Mars. In 1609 he published master’s examination with high marks, and received another Astronomia Nova, and his first two planetary laws: 1. The scholarship. His mathematics professor Michael Mastlin orbit of a planet about the Sun is an ellipse with the Sun’s introduced him to the Copernican system. He became a center of mass at one focus. 2. A line joining a planet and the fervent believer, defended it in a public debate. This Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal intervals. The book is disqualified Kepler from a faculty position at Tubingen generally considered to be Kepler’s most important because Luther had disavowed the Copernican system. He contribution to astronomy. It is one of the first works to deal adhered to the Augsburg Confession, but refused to sign the with imperfect data to produce a precise and testable theory. Formula of Concord. This placed him in jeopardy due to Tycho’s data showed that Mars’ orbit was not quite circular, political unrest and the Thirty Years War. Expecting to and that it moved faster when nearest the Sun. Kepler knew become a priest, he was disappointed when his superiors how to determine position by triangulation. He needed two recommended him for a position teaching astronomy at the known points. The Sun would suffice for one. The stars were university in Graz. He wrote: “a mind accustomed to too distant to help. Kepler’s stroke of genius was to use Mars mathematical deduction, when confronted with the faulty as the triangulation point to find the Earth’s orbit. Taking one foundations (of astrology) resists a long, long time like an Mars year as 687.1 days, he found the location of Mars from obstinate mule, until compelled by beating and curses to put Earth at this interval. He then defined Earth’s orbit precisely, its foot into a dirty puddle.” Since his astrological predictions and then derived Mars orbit precisely from that. came true, he was rewarded with respect and a salary raise. He poured effort into a geometrical framework for the Copernican solar system. First with a system of nested circles and polygons, then spheres in polyhedra, he proposed the model in his 1597 book Mysterium Cosmographicum. When the model did not fit, he blamed measurement error. Though the book required disbelief in his data, his work was praised. He received attention from potential patrons. Tycho Brahe was the wealthy son of a noble Danish family. He was able to purchase the revisions of Ptolemy’s Almagest, best data of the day. He constructed very large instruments for the most accurate position measurements. He hired dozens of assistants. Kepler wrote to his mentor Mastlin, “he is superlatively rich, but he knows not how to make properuse of it, as is the case with most rich people. Therefore, one must try to wrest his riches from him.” The riches are the data Tycho had accumulated. Tycho’s publication of his methods and measurements of the Supernova of 1570 made him famous throughout Europe. King Frederick II of Denmark In 1610 Kepler heard of Galileo’s discoveries and quickly awarded Tycho the island of Hveen, and construction of his composed 2 supporting documents, “Conversation with the observatory, Uraniborg. The observatory was full of gadgets, Sidereal Messenger” and Narration about Four Satellites of distinguished guests were constantly present. Tycho Jupiter observed.” Kepler then provided the beginning of the entertained with raucous parties including a drunken elk and a theory of the telescope in his Dioptrice, 1611. It had the dwarf Tycho believed had second sight. Tycho’s patron died theory of convex and concave lenses, real and virtual images, in 1588, Christian IV was not enamoured of Tycho, and he left magnification, and the Keplerian telescope which had a with his instruments for Prague, Bohemia. By 1600, the convex lens for eyepiece (Galileo used a concave lens.) From Counter-Reformation had reached Graz, and Archbishop 1611-12, Kepler lost a child to smallpox, and his wife died of Ferdinand ordered all citizens to be questioned on their faith. complications of Hungarian fever. Rudolph II’s successor, Kepler refused to renounce Lutheranism, and was dismissed Matthias, forced the Lutherans out of Prague.
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