A new exhibit in the downstairs of Fuertes Observatory allows visitors to view 800 glass lantern slides uncovered and catalogued by the Cornell Astronomical Society.
Andrew Lewis ’27, an electrical engineering major and vice president of the astronomical society, said the lantern slides – transparent photographs or paintings on glass plates designed to be projected onto a screen using an early slide projector – were sitting in three plastic tubs in a Fuertes office.
Though they had been digitized several years ago by members of the society and are available on the astronomical society’s website, the actual slides haven’t been on display recently.
“We found them, thought they were pretty cool and that it was disappointing they were just sitting there,” Lewis said.
The Cornell Astronomical Society is a student organization that sponsors weekly Friday night observing events at the observatory at 209 Cradit Farm Drive, as well as special events and talks related to space and astronomy.
Society members pored through them and found some gems, including an image of a 1925 solar eclipse at the observatory, a shot of the moon taken in 1923 during the week the observatory was first opened to the public and various early images of nebula and galaxies. Students found a projector in the observatory’s basement.
Of the 800 slides the students discovered, about 30 were taken at Fuertes. The rest were most likely purchased or given to the observatory, possibly for professors to use in classes, Lewis said. Through their research, students also determined that the slides were used for public lectures by Samuel L. Boothroyd, Cornell’s first professor of astronomy, on cloudy Friday nights as early as 1923.
Students organized the slides by topic – Sun, solar system, comets, eclipses, instruments, moon, planets, star clusters, and more — so they can use them for Friday night open house presentations, where they also accept requests from visitors to view certain images. The slides are housed in a lantern slide cabinet that students hefted to the basement from the first floor, and which was patented and created by Ithaca’s G.S. Moler company in the early 1910s.
Lewis’ favorite slide shows E.C. Slipher, an astronomer from the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz. who visited Ithaca in 1925 to see the solar eclipse here.
“What’s so cool about this picture is that it’s labeled as being taken right here at Fuertes, probably right in front of the steps you walk up to get into the building,” Lewis said. “We think he’s in a temporary structure, there’s snow on the ground, and the pier and clock drive in this photo are still in this building.”
Slipher is using a spectrograph in the photo, not a telescope, Lewis said, because astronomers used to view eclipses as mostly opportunities to learn more about the sun. “As the moon covered more and more of the sun, they would be able to tell what elements were in different layers of the sun and in the sun’s atmosphere,” he said. “Normally, the sun is too bright and washes out everything.”
Every Friday, from 8 p.m. to midnight, students open the observatory to the public. When the skies are clear, people can take a look through the observatory's telescopes, including the historic 12" Irving Porter Church Refractor. Students also offer tours of the historic building, the telescopes, the museum and this new basement exhibit, regardless of the weather.
The society’s potential next exhibition? That upstairs office also holds dozens of antique globes, which show the celestial sphere, complete with penciled-in notes from past Cornell professors and students.
