Abstract
The narratives of star lore have arisen through painstaking naked eye observations of celestial objects. In contrast, most modern scientific astronomical discoveries and theories are the result of observations made possible by two manmade devices—the telescope and the camera—both of which have enabled humans to gaze at celestial objects in ever finer detail, as well as study those which are imperceptible to the naked eye. The telescope enabled initial important scientific findings to be made, but in many ways it was the invention of the camera (and especially the digital camera) which revolutionized our scientific understanding of the universe. This chapter discusses why this is so and poses some interesting philosophical questions raised by the invention of astronomical photography in particular.
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Notes
- 1.
Galileo Galilei, “The Starry Messenger,” p. 36.
- 2.
David Malim, “A View of the Universe,” p. 25.
- 3.
Anthony Shostak (ed) “Starstruck—the Fine Art of Astrophotography,” p. 19.
- 4.
John Hannavy (ed) “Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography,” p. 516.
- 5.
Kendall Walton, Transparent pictures: on the nature of photographic realism, p. 249.
- 6.
André Bazin, The ontology of the photographic image, p. 5.
- 7.
David Malim, “A View of the Universe,” p. 25.
- 8.
Scott Walden, Truth in Photography, p. 91.
- 9.
Diarmuid Constello and Dawn M. Phillips, Automatism, Causality and Realism, p. 2.
- 10.
Barbara Savedoff, Escaping reality: digital imagery and the resources of photography, p. 202.
- 11.
Kendall Walton, Transparent pictures: on the nature of photographic realism, p. 21.
- 12.
David Malim, “A View of the Universe,” p. 32.
- 13.
Travis A. Rector et al, Image-Processing Techniques for the Creation of Presentation-Quality Astronomical Images, p. 1.
- 14.
Elizabeth Kessler “Picturing the Cosmos,” p. 150.
- 15.
Berta Golahny, How I came to paint the crab nebula: The development of cosmic themes in my oil paintings, p. 364.
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Chadwick, S.R., Paviour-Smith, M. (2017). Observing the Universe in the Modern Age. In: The Great Canoes in the Sky. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22623-1_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22623-1_9
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