Prevalent Misconceptions
The general idea of an astronomer’s work, as gathered from the questions and remarks of visitors, is that he sits at the eyepiece of the telescope sweeping the heavens in a search for new planets, comets or stars. The absolute futility of such a use of the telescope is evident when it is realized that the main field of the 72-inch covers only about one hundred-millionth of the sky and if only five seconds was required to examine each field it would take more than a lifetime to go over the whole sky once. A second misconception is the idea that large telescopes are used for visual observations of the planets with special reference to their habitability. No work is being attempted at this or other large observatories on planetary detail for which about an 18-inch refractor gives the best results and such a large telescope as the 72-inch is quite unsuited. All scientific observations with the 72-inch are made photographically and it is only arranged for visual use on Saturday evenings when for two hours visitors are allowed to observe the heavenly bodies. A third misconception is that the astronomer only works at night. However true this idea may have been in the days of visual observations when the measurements were made at the eyepiece, there is certainly now, when photography is so generally applied, more day than night work in astronomy. Besides the advantages of permanency, accuracy of measurement and power of recording objects beyond the range of the keenest eyesight, the photographic method has the further great advantage that an hour’s exposure may give sufficient material for several days’ measurement and discussion.