The Immortal Fire Within by William Sheehan - Notes by Frank Mills
1857 Born in the slums of Nashville on Dec. 16, 1857. Father died three months before he was born.
1866 Became a photographer’s assistant, working with the Jupiter camera.
1876 Received Dick’s Works, his first astronomy book. Bought his first telescope.
1878 Has his first published work, about the transit of Mercury
1881 Married Rhoda Calvert. Warner offers a $200 dollar prize for the discovery of a comet. In July, EEB discovers a nebula while looking for comets, this later becomes NGC 5584. Sept. 17, discovers his first comet. Put a down payment on a house with the prize money.
1882 Sept. 4, discovers his second comet. City of Nashville wants to build him an observatory. He refuses so he can be free to accept other offers.
1883 March 1, offered a job at Vanderbilt University. July 17 while looking for comets finds a dark nebula in Sagittarius.
1884 July 16, discovers another comet. Period calculated as 5.4 years but comet is never seen again. Discovers Barnard’s Galaxy (NGC 6822)
1887 Hired to work at Lick Observatory in March.
1888 Discovers two new comets in his first year at Lick
1889 New Year’s Day total solar eclipse near Lick. Holden start ASP to popularize astronomy and the eclipse. EEB discovers two more comets during the year. (1889 III will return in 2019. It is the only comet discovered by EEB that will return in less than 1,000 years.) July 28, takes the firsts picture of the Milky Way with the Willard lens (6”)
1891 Discovers five new comets.
1892 Comet total rises to 16. Sept. 9, discovers the fifth satellite of Jupiter. He never settles on a name for it. Flammarion name is Amalthea. It is 170 by 100 miles is diameter and is intensely red. Oct. 12 Burnham writes EEB that Hale wants him to come to Yerkes when it is built. After touring Europe, EEB see the telescope pier and mounting at the Columbian Exposition. He suggests using a screen to block the wind.
1893 EEB thinks the black areas in his pictures of the Milky Way are holes or voids.
1895 EEB leaves Lick for Yerkes thinking it will be finished soon. Construction doesn’t start until April 1895 due to problems with ownership of land. Barnard plans to use Hales 12” but it has been disassembled to be moved to Yerkes. 1896 Summer Barnard and wife move to rental property near Yerkes while a house is being built. Moves into house in December 12” refractor is housed in NE tower. Miss Bruce gives $7000 to begin building a photographic instrument for EEB.
1897 May 21,First light for the 40”. May 28 EEB observes from 12:45 am until daybreak. The last object looked at was M17. They raise the floor to within six inches of maximum and leave it there when they finish. 6:43 am, workmen hear a large crash as the floor collapses on one side. It takes until August to repair the floor. First use of telescope now shows flares of light by each bright object. Next day this is found to be caused by spider webs inside the telescope. Oct. 21, dedication of new telescope
1898 EEB tries to measure parallax in M31 but can’t find any.
1899-1907 Barnard tries to measure motion of the Owl Nebula but again can’t find any. Also tries to find motion in globular clusters (M3, M5, and M13) Again can’t find any.
1898-9 Winter seeing is horrible but EEB begins to observe aurora.
1900 May 28 Observes total eclipse in Wadesboro, N. C. August 31 EEB observes markings on Mercury and finds it to be like the moon.
1901 Joins a team from the U. S. Naval Observatory to see the total eclipse in Sumatra. They get clouded out.
1904 December - The Bruce telescope is shipped to Mt. Wilson for a trial. End of December, Hale decides to make Mt. Wilson separate from Yerkes and U. of C.
1905 Jan. 6, EEB reaches San Francisco. Jan. 27, EEB takes first image with the Bruce telescope. Mid-Sept., EEB packs up the Bruce and returns to Yerkes.
1907 During the passage of the Earth through Saturns ring plane, EEB correctly determines that the Cassini division is not totally empty.
1911 Nov. Spent a month using the 60” reflector on Mt. Wilson. He found the viewing better than with refractors.
1914 Diagnosed with diabetes. Doctors order him to no longer use the 40”.
1914 September, EEB finally releases his pictures of the Milky Way and comets taken in the 1890’s at Lick.
During his time at Yerkes, Barnard photographed many comets with the Bruce telescope. He was trying to learn about their tails. He used two plates to create a 3-D image. He thought that breaks in the comet’s tails were caused by solar storms because he noted auroral displays at the times the tails would change. He was correct. He made many photographs of Halley’s comet in 1910.
He made 1400 comet photos in total.
In 1910 he also began to change his mind about the dark areas of the Milky Way. He began to feel that they were caused by some obscuring matter between the stars and Earth. After 20 years of observing globular cluster he was unable to determine any motion of individual stars. He thinks this means that they are very far away. Barnard did not think his images were useful for measurements. He continued to use the filar micrometer and his eye with the 40”.
1916 While comparing a plate taken in May with the 6” Bruce telescope and one taken in 1894 with the 6” Willard, he found “Barnard’s Runaway Star”. The star with the greatest proper motion, 10.29” per year. Parallax studies show it to be 6.0 LY away, nearest star after the alpha Centauri system.
1918 June 8, Observes the solar eclipse from Green River, WY. Thin clouds block the sun but his images turn out good. That night, outside the hotel, he spots a Nova near Altair.
1921 May 21, Rhoda (his wife) dies from a stroke. Barnard never really recovers from this loss.
1923 February 6, EEB dies at 8 pm from complications of diabetes and an enlarged prostate.
He is laid in state in the rotunda at Yerkes. Burial is in Mt. Olivet Cemetery, Nashville, beside his wife and mother.