Delving into the history of photography undoubtedly unearths some interesting 'firsts' and milestones. We as inhabitants of planet Earth have looked to the heavens since time began and marvelled at what lies out in the vastness of space. Astrophotography, the photography of celestial objects, has certainly played a part in making important discoveries and advancing our knowledge of the universe around us:
January 2, 1839 - Louis Daguerre takes the first known photograph of the moon. Sadly the image does not survive as it was destroyed in a lab fire on March 8 of the same year. Capturing this image would not have been an easy process, as it involved burning mercury and gold and required great skill in the application of liquids and emulsions. July 17, 1850 - Harvard Observatory captures Vega, the second brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere. Vega is the first star after the sun to ever be photographed, and the first to have it's spectrum, or range of electromagnetic radiation, measured. This lead to Vega being the baseline against which other stars are compared.
February 18, 1930 the planet of Pluto was discovered as the result of a photograph by Clyde Tombaugh. Tasked with the job of finding proof of a mysterious ninth Planet X, Tombaugh took pairs of photographs of the night sky over a two week period in January 1930, then viewed them using a blink comparator, to rapidly switch between photographic plates with the hope of detecting any movement of an object's position in the sky. This approach lead to the discovery of a possible moving object between the plates taken on January 23 and January 29. The movement was confirmed by a lesser quality image from January 2. Following further confirming photographs, news of the discovery was dispatched to Harvard Observatory on March 13.
No comments:
Post a Comment