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History - bibliography
Books & Articles about Dudley Observatory
or by Dudley Observatory staff
General Catalogue of 33,342 Stars for the Epoch
1950
(from the Introduction to the General Catalogue)
"The completion of the General Catalogue of 33342 Stars for
the equinox 1950, by the Department of Meridian Astrometry of the Carnegie
Institution of Washington with the cooperation of the Dudley Observatory at
Albany, New York, brings to a close one of the largest astronomical
enterprises ever undertaken by a single agency. Its objectives are threefold:
first, to provide standard star positions the accuracy of which is limited
only by the character and abundance of the observational material upon which
they are based; second, to furnish proper motions through which the star
position can be carried forward or backward from 1950 to any desired epoch;
and third, by accomplishing the first and second objectives to provide a rich
supply of data which will promote research in many astronomical fields.
The General Catalogue contains the standard positions and
proper motions of all stars brighter than the seventh magnitude, extending
from the north to the south pole, and some thousands of additional fainter
stars promising to yield reasonably accurate proper motions.
This large project, initiated by Professor Lewis Boss, was
under his direction until October 5, 1912. The writer, Benjamin Boss, assumed
direction after that date and has now [1937] brought the enterprise to a
conclusion."
Preliminary General Catalogue of 6,188 Stars
As part of his planned program of determining the positions
and proper motions of all stars brighter than the seventh magnitude, Lewis
Boss compiled from existing material the precise positions of 6188 stars that
had been accurately observed in the past. This catalogue was mainly compiled
from existing star catalogues produced by 57 observatories, although to
strengthen the determination of proper motions, 1112 stars were re-observed
from Albany, and 1100 southern stars were observed by Sir David Gill,
Astronomer Royal at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. By careful
mathematical treatment of the data from many different sources, Boss was able
to make a more accurate determination of the position of each star than even
that obtained by even the most careful of the individual observers. The
resulting Preliminary General Catalogue (often referred to as the P.G.C.) was
published in 1910, and became for decades a standard reference used by
astronomers studying star positions and proper motions.
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Civic Astronomy
: Albany's Dudley Observatory, 1852-2002 (Astrophysics and Space Science
Library)
by George Wise
- Hardcover: 225 pages
- Publisher: Springer;
1 edition (December 20, 2004)
- ISBN: 1402026773
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The founding of the Dudley Observatory at Albany, N.Y., in
1852 was a milestone in humanity's age-old quest to understand the
heavens. As the best equipped astronomical observatory in the U.S. led by
the first American to hold a Ph.D. in astronomy, Benjamin Apthorp Gould
Jr., the observatory helped pioneer world-class astronomy in America. It
also proclaimed Albany's status as a major national center of culture,
knowledge and affluence. This book explores the story of the Dudley
Observatory as a 150 year long episode in civic astronomy. The story
ranges from a bitter civic controversy to a venture into space, from the
banks of the Hudson River to the highlands of Argentina. It is a unique
glimpse at a path not taken, a way of doing science once promising, now
vanished. As discoveries by the Dudley Observatory's astronomers,
especially its second director Lewis Boss, made significant contributions
to the modern vision of our Milky Way galaxy as a rotating spiral of more
than a million stars, the advance of astronomy left that little
observatory behind.
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Elites in
Conflict: The Antebellum Clash over the Dudley
Observatory
by Mary Ann James
Hardcover: 301 pages
Publisher: Rutgers
University Press (December 1, 1987)
ISBN: 081351245X
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1858 |
Specimens of the garbling of
letters by the majority of the trustees of the Dudley observatory
by Benjamin Apthorp Gould
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1866 |
Description of the buildings and
instruments (Annals of the Dudley Observatory)
by G. W Hough
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1882 |
Elements of comet Wells, 1882
by C. S Wells
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1856 |
The uses of astronomy: A discourse delivered at Albany on the 28th
of August, 1856, on occasion of the inauguration of the Dudley
observatory
by Edward Everett
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1866 |
Eulogy on the Hon. Charles E.
Dudley (Annals of the Dudley Observatory)
by Washington Hunt
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A key to the "Trustee's
Statement": Letters to the majority of the trustees of the Dudley
observatory, showing the misrepresentations, garblings, and perversions
of their mis-statement
by George Hornell Thacher
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1858 |
A letter to the majority of the
trustees of the Dudley Observatory
by Observer
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1859 |
Reply to the "Statement of the
trustees" of the Dudley Observatory, ([Pamphlets on the Dudley
Observatory controversy)
by Benjamin Apthorp Gould
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1971 |
The Gould controversy at Dudley
Observatory: Public and professional values in conflict
by Richard G Olson
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1871 |
Meteorological observations made
at the Dudley Observatory, during a period of nine years, from 1862 to
1871: Including hourly automatic printed records ... years (Annals of
the Dudley Observatory)
by G. W Hough
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1968 |
Observations of solar eclipses
using SR-71A type aircraft;: An informal conference held at the Dudley
Observatory July 25-26, 1968 (Report)
by Robert D Mercer
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1981 |
Astrophysical parameters for
globular clusters: International Astronomical Union, Colloquium no. 68,
held at Union College, Schenectady, New York, 7-10 October, 1981 (Dudley
Observatory report) |
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1976 |
UBV color-magnitude diagrams of
galactic globular clusters (Dudley Observatory reports)
by A. G. Davis Philip
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1858 |
Speeches of John N. Wilder: June
1858, before the Trustees, with resolutions of the Board, Thomas W.
Olcott
by John Nichols Wilder
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1975 |
A fast fourier transform
spectrometer with applications in radio astronomy (Dudley Observatory
reports ; report)
by Ivan R Linscott
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