Shapley Describes Equipment of Laboratory in South Africa--Observatory Receives Several Small Telescopes

The following article by Dr. Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard Observatory, on the Harvard Astronomical Laboratory in Bloemfontein, South Africa, is reprinted from the current issue of the Alumni Bulletin.

From Pittsburgh there was shipped recently to Bloemfontein, South Africa, the second of the three new mountings for telescopes at Harvard's new southern-hemisphere station on the Modder River in the Orange Free State. The mounting just completed is a fine specimen of the telescope maker's art. It is provided for the 24-inch Bruce photographic doublet which for thirty years has been in operation, with a rather inferior mounting, at the former Harvard station in Arequipa, Peru. The 24-inch Bruce has long been the Observatory's most powerful tool for studying southern stars and nebulae, and with its new modern mounting it will continue on two especially significant problems--first, the survey of the super-system of galaxies known as the spiral or extra-galactic nebulae, and second, the motions of stars, and the stellar structure, in the neighborhood of the sun. For this second problem, Dr. W. J. Luyten, of the Observatory staff, will leave. Cambridge within a month for a year's work with the telescope at Bloemfontein, where he will make plates of the southern sky for comparison with those made more than twenty years ago while the instrument was in South America.

The first new mounting for the Harvard telescopes in the south was shipped some months ago and is now being installed. It was procured for the 10-inch Metcalf triplet, an instrument specially suitable for studies of the faint Milky Way variable stars. The next new mounting to go south will be that of the new 60-inch reflecting telescope, which is to be the largest astronomical instrument in the southern hemisphere. Both the mirror and the mounting are in process of construction in Pittsburgh, and the mounting will probably be shipped before the end of the calendar year. The new reflector will be devoted to various studies, where great light-gathering power is essential. Among its problems will be the analysis of the spectra of southern nebulae, the determination of the velocities of bright stars, the establishment of standard series of magnitudes, the investigations of the light changes of faint variable stars, and the general analysis of the structure and content of the two star clouds of Magellan.

When the station is in full operation, at least six telescopes will be used in South Africa. In addition to those for which new mountings are being supplied, there will be the 13-inch Boyden telescope, especially suited for planetary studies and for the newer types of spectrophotometry, inaugurated in recent years at the Harvard Observatory; an eight-inch photographic lens for work on standard magnitudes and variable stars; and a three-inch "policeman" which will steadily maintain the Harvard patrol on all of the southern sky. In addition there are two or three lenses that will be in occasional use for special investigations.