Google is now serving up more than a hundred years of
photographs from Life Magazine. The pictures of the early days
of astronomy are just spectacular. The archives contain images
of many astronomers who were critical figures in the development
of the field, but who have yet to have telescopes named after
them. A large fraction of them also seemed to smoke pipes. A
huge hero of mine is Walter Baade. Baade was the guy who
essentially took over observations at Mt Wilson during the
blackouts of WWII. With the lights of Los Angeles snuffed out,
and unable to serve in the military himself, he pushed the
telescopes on Mt Wilson to their limits, and established the
study of stellar populations in nearby galaxies. There are some
terrific pictures of Walter Adams working at Mt Wilson. In the
picture below, he’s holding the telescope controls used for
guiding. During an astronomical observation, you have to move
the telescope to compensate for the earth’s rotation. Nowadays,
your computer can take care of it by adjusti