6. Another nearby display case includes the original telescope focusing barrel and filar micrometer (donated by Mrs. Bruce, used for measuring positions of binary stars).
MORE HISTORY: Based on the newly discovered Howe diaries, Howe began taking trial observations in July of 1894: "7/14/1894 -- [First light] ...put on the eye end and the objective. By working some in the evening, the [...] instrument was gotten fairly balanced and we looked through it. Fannie [Howe] looked first at a star: after that the telescope was pointed to the moon and then the cluster in Hercules, which looked fine despite the moon and haze."
According to one more modern account, the first so-called public night occurred on "August 1st, 1894 when Howe treated the Swedish Methodist Christian Endeavor Society to a look at Saturn. After viewing the tiny yellow point of Saturn from outside the Observatory, one disbelieving member of the society said she thought the rings had been 'painted on' the telescope." Unfortunately, this cannot be substantiated with the Howe Diaries, the latter reporting cloudy weather on evenings of Tue 7/31 and Wed 8/1. However the Diaries do allude to a steady stream of University visitors, including Bishop Warren [viewing Saturn and the Ring Nebula on 7/23], and the Chamberlin brothers, F.J. and A.W. on 7/25 [Hercules cluster] who were to report back to H.B.Chamberlin about the telescope performance. To this day, we are pleased with the continued student and public interest in astronomy made possible with this fine telescope. On Fri. 8/3/1894 Howe notes having 14 visitors, "3 of whom paid full price, 10 half price (children of Mrs. Elliott's S.S. class) and one deadbeat. Thus we earned $4." -- note: with inflation, this amounts to over $100 in Y2K dollars. This kind of income, along with DU tuition, has long been vital to sustaining the facility, even from early days.
By late fall, the telescope was ready for professional use. Howe wrote his first observations (he would eventually fill thirty journals with notes) on November 10th and 11th, recording the passage of Mercury across the face of the Sun. Such events, called transits, were eagerly awaited in hopes of discovering moons of Mercury against the blazing background of the Sun. Like many of his colleagues, Howe joined in the fruitless hunt. "I saw some tiny dark spots near Mercury," wrote Howe in his notebook. "They turned out to be sunspots instead of satellites." These observations, printed in the Astronomical Journal in the spring of 1895, are the first published results from Chamberlin.
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