Sky & Telescope September 1981 [antikvár]

The Great Moon Hoax IDavid S. Evans, University of Texas at AustinIN NOVEMBER, 1833, Sir John Herschel, accompanied by his family, set sail from Portsmouth, England, for the Cape of Good Hope. His purpose was to extend to the south the surveys of the northern sky made by his father and himself. He chose the Cape because 13 years earlier the British Admiralty had established there what was intended to be the southern counterpart of Greenwich Observatory; also, his friend Thomas Maclear had very recently been appointed director. Moreover, the Cape lies in the same longitude as eastern Europe and, at this time, Cape Town was the only sizable city in the Southern Hemisphere where English was an important language.In the ship's hold were two telescopes, large by the standards of the time an 18-inch speculum-metal reflector on the Herschelian pattern with spare mirrors, and a 7-inch equatorial refractor. Also included were the paraphernalia needed to set up a complete observatory.In the early morning of January 15, 1834, they sighted land and next day went ashore. Herschel soon found a suitable house, Feldhausen (The Grove), at Clare-mont a few miles south of Cape Town. Its 19 rooms and spacious grounds gave scope for the large family and ample space for the telescopes.The foundation ring and center work of the 18-inch telescope always referred to by its focal length: "the 20-foot" were assembled on February 12th. On the 22nd the telescope was turned on Alpha Crucis. Construction of a pillar for the 7-inch refractor took until the end of April. At that time Sir John and his family moved into the house from temporary lodgings.Sir John's activities at the Cape have been described in detail elsewhere (onesource is our book Herschel at the Cape, 1968). Suffice it to say here that he surveyed the whole of the southern sky for galaxies, clusters, planetary nebulae, and multiple stars, as well as carrying out an enormous variety of other studies.The important point that the reader should keep in mind is that Hersehel's stay was modest and unofficial.In a letter from Lady Herschel to Sir John's aged but indomitable little aunt Caroline, undated but annotated "Reed in London Sept 26, in Hanover Oct 1 (1836)" appears the passage:Have you seen a very clever piece of imagination in an American Newspaper, giving an account of Hersehel's voyage to the Cape with an instrument [omitted] feet in length, and of his wonderful lunar discoveries Birds, beasts and fishes of strange shape, landscapes of every colouring, extraordinary scenes of lunar vegetation, and groupes of the reasonable inhabitants of the Moon with wings at their backs, all pass in review before his and his companions' astonished gaze the whole description is so well clenched with minute details of workmanship and names of individuals boldly referred to, that the New Yorkists were not to be blamed for actually believing it as they did for forty eight hours It is only a great pity that it is not true but if grandsons stride on as grandfathers have done, as wonderful things may yet be accomplished The final reference is, of course, to the achievements of Sir John's father. Sir William Herschel, and the whole passage refers to what has become known as the Great Moon Hoax. The hoax has been described by William H. Barton, Jr., in the February, 1937, issue of The Sky and by Ormond Seavey in his book The Moon Hoax (1975). The original text appeared in the New York Sun for August, 1835.The Sun was published as a penny paper