Author: Brian Garthwaite

Antique Telescope

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Antique brass telescope
Shiny!

We have a whole range of “old” telescopes at the Observatory which, depending on context, can mean state-of-the-art for the 1990s or the 1890s. This, most likely, is our oldest. It’s a lovely old brass refractor set on a fine wooden tripod, and with a properly-fitted eyepiece might work just fine. Not that we’re setting it outside anytime soon. It’s a showpiece!

How old is it? The acquisition date is currently unknown – probably recorded someplace in all of these stacks of papers – but certainly prior to 1886, because it wasn’t given to Bucknell University, but rather to the Lewisburg University, which is what this school was up until that point. That particular bit of information does confirm that it’s older than our big Clark refractor (1887) and our wee Ertel & Sohn transit telescope (1889).

Telescope inscription
Shiny!

“Presented *to the* LEWISBURG UNIVERSITY by Benj. Pike Jr. Optician 294 Broadway New York”

Second point of interest: Benjamin Pike, Jr. was located at 294 Broadway during 1843-44, as near we can tell. But the University at Lewisburg was founded in 1846. Benjamin Pike, Jr. lived from 1808 to 1864, giving us a reasonable last-possible year. So, um, wave your hands and call it circa [insert whatever]. It’s old, brass, and pretty cool.

It’s unclear who made the telescope, too. Pike (like his papa before him) was an optician by trade, and so would have known his way around lenses. None of the quickly-searchable web sources mentions telescopes, though, so maybe he just knew the right sort of gift for ol’ William Bucknell? It’s entirely possible another department on campus has a set of his award-winning surveyors’ tools. We’ve got theodolites in the closet – as one does – but none quite so vintage.

The-o-do-lite. It’s a word with some chew to it.

Shiny!

Cool. So very cool.

And not that we’d be willing to part with it, though it’s not like these don’t show up on the market from time to time. It’s a conversation piece!

Scribbles

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Plywood graffiti.
Does anyone remember Pat?

Disassembling some old wooden equatorial wedges – a means of adapting an altitude-azimuth telescope for sidereal tracking at a specific latitude – and look what’s scribbled on the inside!

“PAT MULLIN RULES <– HE ALSO DROOLS”

Two different sets of handwriting. Appears to be two different ballpoint pens. Not clear if Pat had any input on any of this, or even who Pat is.

It should be noted that one can both rule and drool. Perhaps there isn’t a great deal of overlap in that Venn diagram, but they aren’t mutually exclusive.

Hale-Bopp

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Observatory log sheet
We don’t use these anymore, but they’re charming!

In cleaning out the Observatory, there are endless collections of observing notes from years past. Each a sheet, filled out by hand, with brief remarks on what was observed, the group in attendance, and anything else that seemed salient at the time.

Here, one of many sheets during the long period – about a year and a half – when comet Hale-Bopp could be seen in the sky. Of particular note, and still an issue for Observatory use today:

“Good obs of Hale-Bopp despite the Football lights”

Yup. More than a quarter-century later, and still the same issue with the football lights.

Mystery Resistors

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Mystery resistors label
*spoOoOoky*

One of the many entertaining quirks of an academic setting is the need to organize certain things to conceal their specific nature. When running student labs, it’s not uncommon to give them something to measure using the theory and techniques they’ve recently learned. The instructor knows the approximate Ohm value of the resistor, but the students need to construct a Wheatstone bridge and measure it, because we’ve cleverly concealed the color markings with tape, or permanent marker, or shrink-wrap tubing. Whatever it takes.

Then it goes into a little bin with an entertaining label like MYSTERY RESISTORS! and we get a bit of minor entertainment every time we walk by.

MYSTERY!

Electromagnetic

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Fluorescent ballast
Circular T12s!

Sometimes the old stuff is impressive in its longevity. Here, found in a stairwell in Olin Science, an old electromagnetic fluorescent 2-lamp ballast from… maybe the early ’60s? It’s got that proper audible-frequency buzz, a housing that looks cast, not extruded, and unless the first one fizzled in the ’70s – entirely possible – this sucker might be original to the building.

One day, it’ll expire, bound for disposal as hazardous waste. (Don’t think too hard about the undoubtedly toxic materials all loaded up inside that little black box.) Until then, it hums and buzzes away in the stairwell, illuminating the space with a pallid, cold glow.

Yeah, nobody misses fluorescent lights all that much.

THIS SIDE UP

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Was it supposed to peel off?

Look, we get it. You want a symmetric housing for your low-level architectural exterior lighting, but the situation demands the performance of an asymmetric reflector output. Both style and functionality.

And a stylin’ white label on a black bollard post, conveniently located on the side where people walk and are most likely to see it. And take a picture on their way into the shop. And later post on the internet.

Counter Timer

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Pulse counter, interval timer
Pulse counter / tedium saver

Behold: a box which counts! That’s it, for the most part. It counts pulses of positive voltage. Very quickly, and you can set some thresholds to tell it to count certain values but not others.

It also gates over an interval you set, so you can tell how many pulses it receives over, say, one second. It counts, displays the total, then counts again. Displays the new number.

We use these for our wave/particle duality lab experiment, which relies on counting individual photons. Yes, those. The teeny, massless quantum packets of energy, the messenger particles of electromagnetism. Light. It acts in non-intuitive ways, and the students who think “that’s amazing and I want more!” sometimes become Physics majors.

Part of using this box – just one aspect – is helping convince those students that only one photon at a time can be reaching the photomultiplier tube sensor. At the speed they move, a mind-boggling number of photons can zip through that meter-long box without bunching up. c in air isn’t all that far from c in a vacuum, so if your one-second counts aren’t remotely near 299,792,458 (adjusted for PMT sensitivity and other losses), you know some of those photons are pretty lonesome. Sometimes you need a little math to make sense of things you can’t directly sense.

Pulse counter, back
Crickets.

One other fun aspect is a little switch hidden on the back: cricket. It’s the volume switch, letting the box emit a little beep for every pulse it counts.

If you’re counting pulses from a radioactive source, which arrive randomly, it can be informative to hear these irregular signals, gated and grouped into numbers which show a decaying curve.

If you’re counting 100,000 photons every second, in a room of other lab benches also counting thousands of photons? Less informative, more irritating.