The Scientific and Historical Value of Annotations on Astronomical Photographic Plates

Authors: Sara J. Schechner, David H. Sliski
Comments: 46 pages, 9 figures, Published in the Journal for the History of Astronomy, February 2016

arXiv:1602.03475v2 [physics.hist-ph]
DOI: 10.1177/0021828615624094
License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
Subj-class: History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph)

The application of photography to astronomy was a critical step in the development of astrophysics at the end of the nineteenth century. Using custom-built photographic telescopes and objective prisms, astronomers took images of the sky on glass plates during a 100-year period from many observing stations around the globe. After each plate was developed, astronomers and their assistants studied and annotated the plates as they made astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic measurements, counted galaxies, observed stellar variability, tracked meteors, and calculated the ephemerides of asteroids and comets. In this paper, the authors assess the importance of the plate annotations for future scientific, historical, and educational programs. Unfortunately, many of these interesting annotations are now being erased when grime is removed from the plates before they are digitized to make the photometric data available for time-domain astrophysics. To see what professional astronomers and historians think about this situation, the authors conducted a survey. This paper captures the lively discussion on the pros and cons of the removal of plate markings, how to best to document them if they must be cleaned off, and what to do with plates whose annotations are deemed too valuable to be erased. Three appendices to the paper offer professional guidance on the best practices for handling and cleaning the plates, photographing any annotations, and rehousing them.

Three supplementary appendices are available online here.

Time:  We find it, keep it, measure it, obey it, rely on it, waste it, save it, chop it and try to stop it.  We organize our lives around it, and yet, do we really know what time is?  Drawing upon collections in Harvard’s scientific, historical archaeological, anthropological, and natural history museums and libraries, the book explores the answers given to that question in different ages by different world cultures and disciplines.  Themes include time finding from nature and time keeping by human artifice.  Readers of this book will explore cultural beliefs about the creation and end of time, the flow of time, and personal time as marked by rites of passage.  They will take time out, and examine the power of keeping time together in music, dance, work, and faith.  They will explore time’s representation in history and objects of personal memory, its personification in art, and its expression in biological evolution and the geological transformations of our planet. Featured objects include portable sundials and precision clocks, calendars from different cultures and epochs, time charts shaped like animals, Mesopotamian, Native American, and African ritual objects, fossils, metamorphosing creatures, and Julia Child’s stopwatch.

"The Material Culture of Astronomy in Daily Life: Sundials, Science, and Social Change," Journal for the History of Astronomy 32 (2001): 189-222. Translated into Polish by Darek Oczki, and posted with color illustrations in three parts on the Polish sundial website, http://gnomonika.pl at these addresses:

1. Zegary słoneczne, nauka i przemiany społeczne (cz. 1): http://gnomonika.pl/news.php?id=54
   
2. Zegary słoneczne, nauka i przemiany społeczne (cz. 2): http://gnomonika.pl/news.php?id=59
   
3. Zegary słoneczne, nauka i przemiany społeczne (cz. 3): http://gnomonika.pl/news.php?id=62