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Seeing the Universe

before 1610 - naked eye astronomy
1608 - Galileo's hand held telescopes
1673 - Hevelius' long telescopes
1780 - Herschel's large reflectors
1838 - Meridian Circles
1845 - Rosse's Leviathian
1890 - Barnard's camera
1923 - The Hooker 100 inch
1948 - The Palomar 200 inch
1990 - The Hubble Space Telescope
1998 - The Keck 10 metre pair
2000 - The VLT array
2015 - Planning for the JWST
2020? - Planning the OWL
How much further?

In the early 1890s, Edward Barnard pioneered the technique of using photographic plates to soak up light over many hours and thereby record astronomical details invisible to the eye. He attached a cheap, wide field portrait lens to a wooden box camera and used it to photograph comets over a succession of nights. In 1892, a comet that was not visible by eye emerged on one of his plates - the first to be discovered photographically.

When Barnard turned his camera to the Milky Way, he procured remarkably clear pictures that showed the galaxy's dark dust clouds and faint star clusters for the first time. His images were the result of lengthy time exposures made by guiding the telescope by hand to keep the star field precisely in view. Capturing such images required hours of unwavering concentration that strained eye, mind and body. The first photographic portraits of the Milky Way that he made are permanent reminders of Barnard's skill and discipline.  Yerkes Virtual Museum

Fish-eye lens image of Barnard at Lick Observatory, guiding a telescope to make a time exposure with his box camera
(Yerkes Observatory)