What was the level of astronomy like in say 1888?

[stany]

the late 19th century - were people aware of all the planets? did anyone have any idea of what the Earth looked like? the moon? other planets? when did someone first see the Earth and all the continents?

what about telescopes...how were they in the late 1880s? could your average joe look at Mars and the moon in any detail?

(ive looked on wiki etc but can't seem to track down much in the way of what your average persons knowledge was of basic astronomy in the late 19th century...so any answers would be appreciated...)

 

[Nabeshin]

We knew of all the eight (note 8, not 9!) planets around the turn of the century. The only ones we had any good idea about, however, were Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn (even then, it was thought there might be canals carrying liquid water on the martian surface!). Venus was (and remains) essentially featureless, so even if the disk were resolvable, you gain no useful information, and all other planetary bodies were too small to see. We'd been staring at the moon for a long time, so we had that fairly well mapped out by this time, and of course no one could see the Earth in full until the launch of artificial satellites.

The moon is easy to see in detail even with your naked eye. With a telescope it becomes a festival of small craters and maria. To compare with Mars, the view you get of the moon with your naked eye is MUCH better than the view of Mars through world class telescopes around the turn of the century. Really, we just knew it was red, had icecaps, and some surface features.

Of possible interest to you is the job description of an astronomer circa 1900, which involved, to a very large extent, converting between the various ridiculous coordinate systems and frames that astronomers had contrived to measure the celestial position of bodies (see: celestial mechanics).

I can't speak to the knowledge base of people in the late 19th century, but if I had to guess I would say almost nonexistent. I'm sure people knew that other planets existed, and perhaps even a little about Saturn's rings or Jupiter's red spot, but beyond such elementary knowledge they were likely to be clueless.

 

[twofish-quant]

We knew of all the eight (note 8, not 9!) planets around the turn of the century. The only ones we had any good idea about, however, were Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn (even then, it was thought there might be canals carrying liquid water on the martian surface!). Venus was (and remains) essentially featureless, so even if the disk were resolvable, you gain no useful information, and all other planetary bodies were too small to see. We'd been staring at the moon for a long time, so we had that fairly well mapped out by this time, and of course no one could see the Earth in full until the launch of artificial satellites.

Also we didn't know that there were other galaxies. We also knew that that stars were made of hydrogen and helium. In 1888, we had a good theory about what made the stars shine (gravitational contraction), but people were starting to suspect that there were some deep problems with that theory (i.e. the sun could have existed for only 50 million years whereas it was becoming obvious that the Earth was older than that).

Of possible interest to you is the job description of an astronomer circa 1900, which involved, to a very large extent, converting between the various ridiculous coordinate systems and frames that astronomers had contrived to measure the celestial position of bodies (see: celestial mechanics).

Remember that the word "computer" was a originally job title.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer

I can't speak to the knowledge base of people in the late 19th century, but if I had to guess I would say almost nonexistent. I'm sure people knew that other planets existed, and perhaps even a little about Saturn's rings or Jupiter's red spot, but beyond such elementary knowledge they were likely to be clueless.

The late 19th century in the United States was a fascinating time historically. Mass transportation and mass education were transforming the country, and this was after the Civil War.

 

[Chronos]

Age of the telescope. The late 19th century was the beginning of modern astronomy. Large Newtonians were starting to arrive on the scene. Some very good scientists were also arising to peer through these glass behemoths.

 

[stany]

Thanks for the responses!

a couple of further queries:

no one could see the Earth in full until the launch of artificial satellites.

Would you say the common late 19th century man would have at least had an idea of what the Earth looked like in any way at all? - i.e. was there ever an artists impression of the Earth (garnered from maybe hot air balloon flight) and how the continents were placed or would this have really been impossible until the launch of satellites (and if that’s the case when was it that people first got to see what the Earth properly looked like? Obviously we take it for granted now but that must’ve been mind blowing for everyone whenever it happened…)

 

[Vagn]

Thanks for the responses!

a couple of further queries:



Would you say the common late 19th century man would have at least had an idea of what the Earth looked like in any way at all? - i.e. was there ever an artists impression of the Earth (garnered from maybe hot air balloon flight) and how the continents were placed or would this have really been impossible until the launch of satellites (and if that’s the case when was it that people first got to see what the Earth properly looked like? Obviously we take it for granted now but that must’ve been mind blowing for everyone whenever it happened…)

http://globemakers.com/facsimile/globe_merzbach.html", so yes people would have known what the world looked like.

 

[Nabeshin]

(garnered from maybe hot air balloon flight)

For perspective, record hot air balloon flights from around the middle to end of the 19th century reached an altitude of ~30,000ft, which is the routine cruising altitude for commercial airplanes. So no more insight would have been gathered from such voyages than is from your average trip from LA to NYC.

 

[stany]

wonder how they managed to figure out what the world looked like (that globe for example) without any external reference?

 

[Chronos]

Sailors mapped the Earth until the 20th century. This was quite a feat given their device of choice was the venerable astrolabe. The Earth was known to be spherical by scientists many centuries ago [the ancient greeks, as I recall]. Lunar eclipses cinched the deal. The ancienst realized these eclipses were the result of Earth passing between the moon and the sun. Those ancient guys were anything but fools. Speaking publicly of such matters was, however, generally regarded as a bad idea.

 

[Vagn]

Sailors mapped the Earth until the 20th century. This was quite a feat given their device of choice was the venerable astrolabe. The Earth was known to be spherical by scientists many centuries ago [the ancient greeks, as I recall]. Lunar eclipses cinched the deal. The ancienst realized these eclipses were the result of Earth passing between the moon and the sun. Those ancient guys were anything but fools. Speaking publicly of such matters was, however, generally regarded as a bad idea.

More specifically, the Ionian Greeks knew the Earth to be spherical, and were also the main group who advanced ancient knowledge of the world. The Ionians include people like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales#Sagacity" who first proposed the theory of the atom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras" , who was the first person to suggest that humans had evolved from some other animal, as well as describing weather as a meteorological phenomena rather than the act of a deity. He can also be consideed one of the fathers of cosmology, as he attempted to describe the universe using non-mythological hypotheses.

The Ionians were a lot more advanced than people realize.

 

[twofish-quant]

Would you say the common late 19th century man would have at least had an idea of what the Earth looked like in any way at all? - i.e. was there ever an artists impression of the Earth (garnered from maybe hot air balloon flight) and how the continents were placed or would this have really been impossible until the launch of satellites.

People did have a good idea of where the continents were in the 19th century. Once you have good clocks you can figure out latitude and longitude and then plot it on a map, and there are a lot of old maps in the 19th century.

Something that I remember reading (which I'm trying to find a reference to) is that a big surprise was how clouds looked like from space. There was some debate as to whether or not you would see spirals or whether those would get lost in random cloud formations.

One thing that I find interesting is that we are still making discoveries. It's only in the last ten years, that we've conclusively established from satellite observations that monster rogue waves exist.

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMOKQL26WD_index_0.html

 

[twofish-quant]

The Ionians were a lot more advanced than people realize.

Not surprising. We have more technology than the Greeks, but as far as raw brain power, people have had the same amount for the last 100,000 years.

Also even when they were wrong, they were clever. The Greeks thought that the Earth was in the center of the universe. They thought this because they believed that if the Earth was moving you ought to see the stars wobble because of parallax.