TAM O’SHANTER DRAWING SESSIONS
[3. Star Session II] An astronomer’s guide to the night sky and letter-writing as drawing / Saturday, June 11, 2016, 8-10pm / Allegheny Observatory, Riverview Park, Pittsburgh / Liz Park, Associate Curator, Carnegie Int’l, 57th ed., 2018, in collaboration with University of Pittsburgh astronomer Tommy Nelson.
This is the third in a series of Tam O’Shanter Drawing Sessions takes drawing sessions that will take place its name from the Carnegie Museum of over the next few years and constitute Art’s tradition of Saturday art a programmatic piece of the Carnegie classes for children. From 1929 until Int’l, 57th ed., 2018. Each session the 1970s, the classes were named will be conducted by a participant in after the Scottish cap, or tam, often the International. Stay tuned for adorned with a fetching pompom or future sessions. feathers.
Carnegie Int’l, 57th ed., 2018
PROGRAM for GROUP A
7:45pm, Doors open Observatory dome will be open for viewing if weather permits.
8-8:30pm, Salutations Welcome by Ingrid Schaffner, Curator, Carnegie Int’l, 57th ed., 2018 Tommy Nelson presents: letter-writing in astronomy Liz Park presents: letter-writing as drawing
8:30-9pm, Tour of the Facilities Tour of the facilities with Louis Coban, Electronics Specialist, Allegheny Observatory, and Tommy Nelson
9-9:30pm, Writing as Drawing/Drawing as Writing Letter-writing with Liz Park in the Library and the Director’s Office
9:30-10pm, Closing Guided viewing from the observatory, weather permitting, and letter-exchange
PROGRAM for GROUP B
7:45pm, Doors open Observatory dome will be open for viewing if weather permits.
8-8:30pm, Salutations Welcome by Ingrid Schaffner, Curator, Carnegie Int’l, 57th ed., 2018 Tommy Nelson presents: letter-writing in astronomy Liz Park presents: letter-writing as drawing
8:30-9pm, Writing as Drawing/Drawing as Writing Letter-writing with Liz Park in the Library and the Director’s Office
9-9:30pm, Tour of the Facilities Tour of the facilities with Louis Coban, Electronics Specialist, Allegheny Observatory, and Tommy Nelson
9:30-10pm, Closing Guided viewing from the observatory, weather permitting, and letter-exchange
Atop Riverview Park Pittsburgh, PA June 11, 2016
Dear Letter-writers and Star-gazers,
Let us put our ear to the walls of the Allegheny Observatory, where we are gathered to look skyward for inspiration. So that when we walk through its chambers, look through its telescopes, and admire the artifacts passed down from the generations past, we hear the reverberating tales of creativity, ingenuity, and dedication of the lovers and the students of the night sky and beyond.
***
The Allegheny Observatory was founded in 1859 when a group of enthusiasts formed the Allegheny Telescope Association. This club purchased a 13” refracting telescope for the new observatory building on Pittsburgh's Northside in 1861. By 1867 interest in the observatory had waned and the declining membership, being in debt, donated the telescope and observatory building to the Western University of Pennsylvania (now the University of Pittsburgh). In that same year, Professor S.P. Langley was appointed Director of the Observatory and Professor of Astrophysics. The observatory received a new scientific direction and Langley used the telescope to study the sun.
On June 1 1891, Professor Langley's assistant, James Keeler, succeeded him as Director. Keeler’s observations of the spectrum of Saturn's rings demonstrated that every point in the ring system is moving with the velocity that a moon would have if situated at that distance from the planet. With the 13” Fitz refractor, Keeler had provided the visual proof that the rings of Saturn were particulate.
In 1899 Professor Wadsworth took up the directorship and immediately set about supervising the building plans for the new observatory. The 30” Thaw telescope is the primary instrument of the current Allegheny Observatory. It is the third largest refractor in the United States. The Thaw telescope’s primary mission was to study the distance to nearby stars using a method known as parallax; it resulted in the collection of over 110,000 photographic plates now housed in the basement of the Allegheny Observatory. The information gathered from the Thaw observations helped set the distance scale of the universe.
Other areas of study at Allegheny Observatory include spectroscopic studies of binary stars using the 31” James E. Keeler Memorial Telescope, and brightness measurements of variable stars (stars that change in brightness over time). Even in the age of space-based astronomy, the observatory continues to make valuable contributions to contemporary science through STEPUP, a program to observe transits of extrasolar planets organized and carried out by Pitt undergraduate students.
***
In closing this letter, I evoke the words shared on the Allegheny Observatory website: Astronomy the oldest of the sciences, is education in its purest form, for astronomy exists only because people want to know and understand the universe that surrounds them.
The night is dedicated to our capacity to understand, as well as to our capacity to draw connections, inspirations, and lines of thought and strength.
Yours truly, Liz Park