1. Photo Tour of the
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
(Cambridge, MA)
As the Smithsonian Center for Learning & Digital
Access team prepared for this online conference,
we got the behind-the-scenes tour of SAO-check
out these photos & tidbits from Tuesday 6/11!

2. Alison Doane, Curator of Plate Stacks, pulls one of the half-million
glass plates from a storage cabinet housed at the Observatory.

3. Camera to digitize plates. This will make these images from
the 19th century through the 1970’s available to astronomers
(professional and non) worldwide

4. Glass plate and "Fly Spanker" calibrator shows Harvard
Computers notes regarding brightnesses of stars.

5. Halley's Comet -- taken during 1910
appearance!

6. Glass Plate of Large Magellanic Cloud (small galaxy
neighboring our Milky Way), visible from Southern
Hemisphere. Taken in 1948.

7. “Harvard Computers” -- women astronomers
who did much of the eye-straining visual
analysis of glass plates. This picture taken
about 1913.

8. Moon Daguerreotype -- taken by Great Refractor on
Feb 26, 1852. One of first Moon photos ever taken!

9. ‘The Great Refractor’ (est. 1847) was the telescope that took
the 1st astrophotograph- a daguerrotype of the star Vega in
1850!

10. Dan & Ashley from our team sitting where many science
greats of the past sat—including Albert Einstein!

11. Ashley & Dan from our team check out the MicroObservatory
remotely controlled telescopes. (Behind them, you can see
‘The Great Refractor’)

12. The “insides” of one of the MicroObservatory
telescopes- meet ‘Ed’!

13. Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) videowall -- most recent
several days data from this NASA satellite on constant
display. Instruments that took these images built at SAO.

14. Stunning data images of the sun in close to
real-time!

15. We’ll be broadcasting live in just a few minutes
from the site of Director Ed Pickering’s Rotating
Desk, (July 1902)

16. Special thanks to the staff of the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory for sharing this
behind-the-scenes tour!
We’ll be right back with an interactive online
conversation with Joe DePasquale and Mary
Dussault.
Stay tuned!