| |
Before going into
details, let me first mention that I find this a very impressing book, great to
look at and refreshing to read. With ESO seen through the eyes of a visitor,
things gain a perspective that is quite different from that of the previous
book, and at least as attractive. It comes as no surprise that the book starts
with a visit of ESO's showcase, the Paranal Observatory, and the writer not
only notes down his own impressions, but also cites statements of some of the
many people that keep Paranal going - technicians and staff astronomers. This
mixture of texts provides a good impression of the operations at a large
observatory for the general reader.
The two more `astronomical' parts that follow deal with star and
planet formation, stellar death and dust formation, as well as with the
Universe, its beginnings and contents (focussing on quasars and SN Ia); like
the previous chapters, they contain many quotations of astronomers involved in
these types of research (I suppose they are taken from interviews); these
blocks, each composed of three chapters, are separated by a more technical
part, two chapters dealing with interferometry and adaptive optics.
The last third of the
book is then dedicated almost exclusively to ESO's "prehistory'', and here the
reviewer starts to frown. This is a very extensive report on Jürgen
Stock's early site testing work for US astronomers, first for Gerard Kuiper and
the University of Texas, and then for the Association of Universities for
Research in Astronomy (AURA), to find an suitable place for a projected
telescope and then for the AURA southern observatory, with page-long excerpts
from his notebooks (or the printed "Stock reports''). It also deals with
Stock's later activities in Chile and Venezuela. Finally, there are a few pages
on the foundation of ESO and the choice of a Chilean site, as well as another
few pages on future projects of ESO.
The decision of ESO to go to Chile is
treated very briefly, much shorter than in Blaauw's 1991 book ESO's Early
History; the reasons for the early focussing on a site in South Africa, and
the relatively quick jump on the "Chilean bandwagon'' remain quite obscure.
Compared to that, the 25 pages of "Stock reports'' written to help the decision
making of the site of the AURA observatory, contain a lot of not-too-relevant
details like prices and names of horses and mules employed in Stock's site
testing survey. It is fun reading, but does not penetrate under the surface,
and the author's somewhat desperate attempt to join together the ends of the
threat, "also the VLT is a consequence of Jürgen Stock's activities in
Chile'', appears not very convincing.
I do not want at all to diminish Stock's
immense work that made Chile to the "golden land of astronomy'' in the late
decades of the 20th century. Stock was sent by the US astronomers, and they
became active because of Kuiper's enthusiasm, that was triggered by a visit of
Federico Rutlland, director of the Astronomy Department of the Universidad de
Chile -- the former Chilean National Observatory, whose founding was triggered
by the activities of a US astronomical expedition in the mid-19th century,
headed by James Gilliss; and Gilliss was inspired by an astronomical
proposition made in 1847 by Christian Gerling, a mathematics professor of
Marburg. And besides this line of events, there have been other astronomical
expeditions and observing stations in the north of Chile in the late 19th and
early 20th century. What is the true first cause of the presently florishing
astronomical activity in Chile? Certainly not the "Stock report''! At times
ESO's development resembled more a random walk than a strategic process, that -
given enough time and money - finally culminated in a very successful research
institution.
This very
pretty and informative book, whose author - intentionally or unintentionally -
had the courage to neglect important things, and to include irrelevant things,
is not a book that tells the whole story (and actually no book can achieve this
goal!). Even a book like Lorenzen's that is composed of huge fragments that do
not quite fit into the story, can make fascinating reading. However, besides
the publisher's logo, this book carries the ESO logo, and therefore becomes
something like an "official'' ESO publication. And this is why one wonders why
so much space is used up to describe activities which have hardly any relation
to ESO's history, a history that really deserves to be communicated to the
interested general public. If this book would encourage some of the early
players of ESO to pen down their memoirs and make them available to science
writers and historians, a story at least as colorful as that of Jürgen
Stock would emerge! And only then it would be possible to write a more balanced
history of ESO.
|
