W2B-008 Irish observatories-0.txt
4 Reconstruction After World War II, 1947-1974

The task of writing the full story of Irish astronomy from the early 1940's, when Eric Lindsay at Armagh first seriously tackled the possibility of a joint approach with a re-founded Dunsink, up to Lindsay's death in 1974, has not yet been comprehensively faced. In conjunction with Hermann Bruck and Susan McKenna-Lawlor, I produced personal accounts in my own history of Dunsink (Wayman, pp. 206-258), but Bennett specifically omitted, in his bicentennial history of Armagh, the details of the Boyden Observatory collaboration after 1954. On this occasion, I cannot do the subject justice, but it is of great interest and must be included to the extent of the time available to me.

Eric Lindsay, coming to Armagh in 1938, indeed coming back to Armagh, his native county, knew that major alterations had to be made if the observatory were to survive. He had spent some years at Harvard Observatory and had been entrusted for two years with the post of Assistant Director of Boyden Observatory in the Orange Free State in South Africa. The advent of the Second World War notwithstanding, he took the strengthening of Irish participation in practical observing programmes at Boyden as one of his major interests for the remainder of his life, that is over thirty years.

Lindsay saw that Eamon de Valera, then Taoiseach in the Dublin government, was keenly interested in including Dunsink Observatory in his new Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies; indeed, de Valera had admired Sir Edmund Whittaker during the years 1906 to 1912 when he, de Valera, had been a mathematics lecturer in the Carysfort Teachers Training College. He had taken as one of his aims for the Institute the perpetuation in conscious memory of, and if possible the future emulation of, Sir William Rowan Hamilton as an Irish mathematician. The observatory at that time was rented to two tenants, the main building to Dr Oliver Chance, a prominent member of the medical profession, and Dunsink House to Rev. R. M. Gwynn, a Fellow of Trinity College, and was quite out of use as an observatory, although mail continued to come from all over the world, and some semblance of dealing with it was maintained by F. J. O'Connor, a Trinity lecturer in astronomy for the general degree, who had assisted at Dunsink since he was 16 years old.

On 11th November 1942, Lindsay wrote (Wayman, p.331) to Eamon de Valera with the specific suggestion that Armagh and Dunsink could be joined in a venture to support astronomical work at Boyden Observatory, regarded as the Southern observing station of Harvard College Observatory, which was formerly in Peru, but moved to South Africa in 1927. The particular intention was to obtain photographic material that could be brought back to Ireland for measurement and analysis. This had always been the modus operandi for those at Harvard interested in southern hemisphere material, especially Professor A. H. Shapley and the Gaposchkins. Using material from Peru, the Henry Draper Catalogue had included the southern hemisphere, and from plates of the Magellanic Clouds Henrietta Leavitt had, in 1912, discovered the period-luminosity relation of cepheid variable stars (Leavitt, 1912).

Lindsay suggested as early as 1942 the construction of a modern telescope which could be jointly owned by Armagh, Dunsink, and Harvard and it soon became clear that the Schmidt principle should be the basis of such a photographic telescope. James Baker of Harvard at that very time was examining the possibility of the so-called Schmidt-Cassegrain optical systems for large astronomical cameras. By the combination of two mirrors of similar curvature, a concave primary and a concave secondary, Baker showed that the advantages that could be obtained over the single-mirror Schmidt system were flatness and accessibility of the field and shorter tube-length in comparison with focal length.

Eamon de Valera, in due course, incorporated Lindsay's suggestions in his provisions for that part of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies that became the School of Cosmic Physics, with three Senior Professors in the general areas of astronomy, cosmic ray studies, and geophysics including meteorology. The necessary Establishment Order founding the School went through Dail Eireann in March 1947, not without birth-pains (Wayman, p.334). Due to the importance of Shannon as a transatlantic air terminal, emphasis was put on the science of meteorology as being necessary for Ireland. In the event, meteorological science has not been followed in the School in any academic sense; the emphasis of the Section, very successfully, has been on geophysical work.

Hermann Bruck, chosen by de Valera as the first director of the newly-organised Dunsink, while perfectly happy to be part of the 7-year old Institute, did not at first approve of Dunsink being part of the School of Cosmic Physics (Wayman, p.215). Consequently, his appointment was delayed until October 1947. Meanwhile, in April, the agreement with Harvard concerning the construction of the 'Armagh-Dunsink-Harvard' telescope by Perkin-Elmer Company of Boston was signed. Bruck, of course, had many matters on his hands, not least, from 1952, when the telescope was nearing completion, a commitment to host the International Astronomical Union General Assembly in Dublin in September 1955.

Eric Lindsay was very keen on the implementation of the ADH for a number of projects, including valuable catalogues of red0emission objects in the Magellanic Clouds (E. M. Lindsay, 1956, 1961).

The fact that a formal agreement had been established between the Northern Ireland Government and the Dublin Government was a unique achievement. Lindsay emphasised strongly the need to pursue cross-border common aims, and he tended to shrink somewhat from U.K. proposals for new astronomical facilities to be operated by several bodies jointly. He was not thoroughly immersed in the technicalities of the ADH instrument and, in discussing operational problems with me many years later, he expressed himself quite surprised that a telescope conceived in the then-modern style should produce intractable mechanical and optical problems. Those who have followed telescope construction since then, up to and including the Hubble Space Telescope, are unlikely to be so surprised. Funds were quite restricted, of course, even though the project had the full support of Harlow Shapley, Harvard's director. It did not seem possible to obtain a permanent successor to J.S. Paraskevopoulos as director of Boyden; a succession of short-term temporary directors were appointed, so that there was no one person with an unremitting aim of commissioning the ADH, and indeed 'Paras' himself was said to have thought the former Bruce telescope mounting was overloaded by adapting it to the ADH. Technical details tended to be dealt with by the admirable Ernest Burton, long-serving mechanic and general factotum at Boyden, who grew up under the aegis of Paraskevopoulos in the early 1930's.

Erected on its barely adequate mounting, the ADH telescope produced magnificent photographs of the dense southern hemisphere Milky Way and Magellanic Cloud regions. The mounting was of 1933 design (by Fecker) and had a simple Gerrish pendulum-controlled d.c. motor drive of that era. The telescope needed careful coaxing if it were to give its best results and among the Armagh staff now is John butler who, as a research scholar at Dunsink in the period from 1965 to 1969 became one of the few who mastered its operation. David Andrews, too, staff member at Armagh since 1963, as resident Acting Director at Boyden for the period 1965-1966, had mastered the ADH and he produced, among other good data, material for his first Armagh Atlas of the Orion Region (Andrews, 1974) which was followed by a much more comprehensive second Atlas (Andrews, 1981) produced with the use of the UK Schmidt at Siding Spring and the automatic RGO 'Galaxy' machine. During his period at Dunsink Hermann Bruck had tackled many things and at least two of his assistants, Hugh Butler, followed by Michael J. Smyth, used plate material from the ADH telescope. Michael Smyth reduced cluster magnitude-colour diagrams and incorporates some ADH plates in his Edinburgh University teaching material to this day. Another important facility of the ADH telescope that was implemented from 1955 onwards was the provision of a large objective prism, enabling the star images to be recorded as tightly-packed spectra of dispersion around 250 A/mm at H-gamma. This was one of the largest prisms ever made, but, as with other features of the Boyden equipment there were problems. The telescope could not be accurately guided when the prism was on, and it was strongly suspected that the tube was overloaded by the weight of the prism and the added counterweights, although this was never fully demonstrated.

Mervyn Ellison, son of Rev. William Ellison (Armagh director 1918-1936), was director at Dunsink from 1958 up to his relatively early death in 1963 and was my immediate predecessor. He had hardly turned his attention at all to the question of the ADH and Boyden, although both Michael Smyth and he had attended some meetings of the newly formed Boyden Council. Since I had had experience at Pretoria and Cape Town from 1957 to 1960, I adopted the policy that Boyden facilities, both at the ADH and the 60-inch reflector, ought to be utilised as much as possible from both Armagh and Dunsink. With the help of John Butler, Brendan Byrne, Brendan Jordan and others at Dunsink, and with co-operation from Eric Lindsay and David Andrews at Armagh, a certain amount was achieved during the period 1965-1972. A large body of data on faint cepheid variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds was obtained by John Butler, who successfully calibrated the plates using the 60-inch reflector, and many new light curves were published (Butler, 1976, 1978; Wayman et al., 1984). This material led, too, to a useful discussion of rate of change period of variable stars in both Magellanic Clouds, a unique body of data (Deasy and Wayman, 1986).

However, support from Harvard disappeared during the period of increasing opposition to the overtly pro-apartheid regime that set in in South Africa from the time of the establishment of the Republic there in 1960. Harvard was replaced by the Boyden Council by the Smithsonian Institution. Donald H. Menzel, as an Emeritus Professor, and a very eminent senior astronomer, represented the Institution on the Council on behalf of Fred Whipple. The incorporation of the University of the Orange Free State at Bloemfontein, as the local university, into the Boyden Council in 1966 and the installation of Alan Jarrett, formerly at Queen's University, Belfast, as director in 1968, was necessary in order to provide greater permanency, stability, and funding, but, in a climate of increasing difficultly in operating in South Africa, really satisfactory progress at Boyden became impossible. After Eric Lindsay's sudden death in 1974, the Smithsonian withdrew completely and the informal Boyden Council was dissolved. The optical parts of the ADH telescope are in storage at Dunsink. In 1977 Mart de Groot and I made strong efforts to have them adopted in a possible new telescope at the San Pedro Martyr observatory site of the National University of Mexico near Tijuana, Baja California, but it was found not to be a viable project; the cost of incorporating them would be greater than the cost of purchasing a complete conventional telescope of more effective design off-the-shelf.

With the advent of SERC facilities in Australia, La Palma and Hawii, and with the possibility of incorporating the Republic of Ireland in the Spanish Institute of Astrophysics of the Canaries in 1979, a whole series of other doors have opened. There have been some joint technical projects in recent years; Mart de Groot continues to give good advice at the Governing Board of the School of Cosmic Physics, as did Eric Lindsay before him, and he also serves on that Board's Advisory Committee for La Palma and the HST. At present he is Chairman of the Royal Irish Academy National Committee for Astronomy that as an Academy committee takes the whole of Ireland as its domain; I continue to serve on the Board of Management at Armagh Observatory and Planetarium, as well as (since 1965) on the Board of Governors and Guardians of Armagh Observatory, and I am very proud of being able to do so.
