Stories of Discovery

Look beyond the “eureka moments” and explore the richer history of scientific work and innovation. Investigate their stories of discovery below. Often they involve a network of individuals spread across the globe and even distanced in time. In fact, our understanding of these discoveries continues to expand to this day. Perhaps you will be involved in these stories moving forward.

The rare chance alignment of the Moon passing directly in front of the Sun has captivated humanity and been recorded for as long as records exist. The momentary descent into night in the middle of the day is breathtaking and also an opportunity to study parts of the Sun that are usually hidden in the glare of the unblocked Sun. By chance, a total solar eclipse occurred at the location the Van Vleck Observatory at Wesleyan University and drew astronomers and spectators from around the world. This story describes that event and the discoveries that were made of the Sun using these rare events.

The inventory of our solar system has been steadily growing. Even the classification of objects have changed as we learn more about the bodies in our immediate cosmic neighborhood around the Sun. These bodies are much more than just the planets, but include moons, asteroids, comets. Their properties and where they are located in the solar system tell us much about the history and origins of the Sun and planets. A number of important astronomers who discovered new objects visited Van Vleck Observatory at Wesleyan University. The legacy of their work continues as we explore the most distant objects in our solar system and discover planets around distant stars.

When we look upon the stars at night, they have a constancy and reliability about them. They are always there and appear the same from night to night. However, when we study and observe stars more closely, we discover that they are dynamic. Their brightness can change in a matter of seconds due to stellar flares, or on timescales of years, passing through decades-long cycles like our own Sun does. How stars vary and what that tells us about them was the subject for many astronomers that visited Van Vleck Observatory at Wesleyan University. The discoveries associated with variable stars is far-reaching, and addresses how the iron in our blood came to be as well as the size and age of the Universe.

Stars are the most fundamental, stable astronomical object that forms in the Universe. There are smaller objects, such as planets and asteroids, but these are the natural leftovers from forming a star. Stars live for billions of years and are the source of all the elements in the periodic table beyond hydrogen and helium. Hence, as the saying goes, we are made of starstuff. Understanding stars is one of the great stories in astronomy, bridging early astronomical cataloging through the birth of quantum mechanics, and ultimately to today where we have a solid understanding of how stars work. Many of the major players in this story visited Van Vleck Observatory at Wesleyan University. The story of their discoveries highlights the transition from astronomy to modern astrophysics.

Despite our modest position as upright mammals on a small planet in the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy, the origin of the entire Universe and its future fate are not unfamiliar topics for humans. The scientific work that has revealed insights into these topics involved several astronomers who visited Van Vleck Observatory at Wesleyan University. Their story highlights the power of the scientific method to adjust and correct our ideas based on new and more accurate observations. This process is not always clean and obvious, but over time does provide a clearer understanding of the Universe we inhabit.