I’ve always been fascinated by astronomy, so I knew when I moved to London that I’d have to visit the Royal Observatory. They host a limited series of evening lectures, and I bought tickets for late January to see “Destination Mars.” Mars was quite close & bright at the time, and I was excited to see it through their 28-inch refracting telescope. With my old 8-inch scope I could just make out the polar caps, so I could only imagine what I’d see using a 28-incher.
The observatory is located in Greenwich, about 30 minutes east of central London. The neigborhood is very pretty, large stately buildings with long manicured lawns circled by bicyclists and joggers. It reminded me of an Ivy League college campus, like Harvard in Boston. As we approached the observatory we saw a green laserbeam rising from it and piercing the sky. It was the international time line, the demarcation of Greenwich Mean Time, pointing due north from the Observatory along the prime meridian line (zero degrees longitude) which was fixed there at an international conference in 1884.
© Grant Sager
(I tried to take a picture with a cell phone (below), but it didn’t quite capture the beauty like the photo I found on Flickr (above).
As you can see, the laser was visible for many miles… because the sky was covered with clouds. Not a good sign when you want to go stargazing. Damned London weather. There was no way we’d get to use the telescope tonight.
The park is closed at night, so they had to escort us to the observatory on a golf cart shuttle bus. Then we were taken down to the planetarium where the astronomer/lecturer gave us an impromptu discussion of Mars and the possibility of life on planets in other star systems. (Quite cool — I wish I had my own planetarium to play around with.)
With time to spare, they decided to take us to the observatory dome so that we could at least see the 28-inch telescope, even if we couldn’t look through it.
© Science Photo Library/Photo Researchers, Inc
The observatory is a beautiful piece of scientific history. It was commissioned by King Charles II in 1675 and designed by Sir Christopher Wren (who also built St Paul’s Cathedral and many other landmarks in London). Its main use was to perfect the determination of longitude and other measures which ushered in the modern age of navigation.
The 28-inch refracting telescope was built in 1893 and is still the largest of its kind in Britain, 28-feet long and weighing 1.4 tons. Even the engineering work to build the mount to hold the scope was a feat of engineering in its day. The counterweights are so precise that you can nudge the telescope from side to side with your finger — I know, because they let me try it.
During World War 2 the British government hid the telescope in a bunker for safe keeping, and brought it back after the war. It’s mostly retired, not used by scientists but still opened for tourists and astrophotography. Hopefully I’ll get my chance next to look through it next time.
I also can’t wait to return and see the rest of the exhibits and planetarium shows. We only got to see a few items during our visit, like this meteorite which is labeled “the oldest object you will ever touch,” about 4.5 Billion years old (that’s 4,500,000,000). I touched it. It was cold.
