Astronimouse
@astronimouse
A mouse from the old Cambridge Observatory. I love old books and everything astro-historical.
@unamccormack.bsky.social The book is now continuing its adventures in time and space via the Institute of Astronomy book swap library!
@unamccormack.bsky.social Look what we found in the YMCA charity shop in St. Ives today! Bought for £1 -looking forward to reading it soon.
Many of our library journal volumes were specially presented to the Cambridge Observatory. In this case the first volume of the Publications of the Lick Observatory was presented to JC Adams (who was then Director of the Cambridge Observatory).
To clear space, I'm giving away books, mainly conference proceedings, these are duplicates of books we already hold and were never part of our library. Books are in Library room C.
Picket line at the University of Cambridge, Downing Site this morning. Support staff are on strike, asking for a Cambridge Weighting.
It looks like this strike is to become much more serious. A further TEN DAYS of strikes in May. The union are reporting strong support and many new members joining. University museums and many of the libraries have been closed. Anger at below inflation rises for year on year has built up.
That was a good mornings cataloguing! Reports of the Solar Physics Committee (ranging from 1891 to 1914)
Not much of a twitcher but snapped this sighting of a penguin at the Cambridge Observatory this morning. Believe its either escaped from the British Antarctic Survey, or maybe a Fakelands Penguin (the only Northern hemisphere species)?
Richard Carrington has been in the news recently with the brilliant discovery of his portrait by the @royalastrosoc.bsky.social here is a picture of his Redhill Observatory.
As a librarian interested in the provenance of books in our collection - you can understand my frustration here!
The first Dunsink volume is dated 1870 and has these interesting comments on its location and weather!
The Cambridge Observatory Library has many published volumes of observations from other 19th century observatories, such as these from Dunsink in Ireland.
The Henry Draper Catalogue (HD) is a star catalogue giving spectroscopic classifications for 225,300 stars, the Cambridge Observatory copy belonged to W.H. Steavenson (the last amateur to be President of the RAS) this is what it looks like on the shelf
A pleasant discovery that each of the volumes 7 to 15 of the Edinburgh Astronomical Observations has a different illustration on its title page. I particularly liked the one with the dog barking at the One O'Clock Gun!
This is the title page of the first volume, at the top is a greek quotation handwritten - possibly the statement by Lucian that; an uneducated life is not worth living!
I brought down our 'Jesuit' Edition of Newton's Principia for a visitor today. I have learnt that they were R.C. priests but not Jesuits who edited this influential edition 1739-42.
Observations received from Melbourne Observatory, Australia. I particularly like the lat/long given on the book label. Another little gem from the Cambridge Observatory library.
A little gem from the Cambridge Observatory collection. Many of the books in the collection link us to places all over the world - in this case the Sydney Observatory in Australia.
This is an example of the book label used for the original collection of books at the Observatory. These were placed during the 1830's and often record interesting donors of books to the Library.
John Couch Adams was Director of the Cambridge Observatory from 1861 until his death in 1892. He was a great book collector. He left thousands of books to the University library and to a library in Cornwall, but many of his astronomical books remained at the Observatory.
Like many of our older books, it has Cambridge Observatory prominently on the cover.
In the 19th century the Cambridge Observatory was sent the publications of many other observatories from around the world: this is from the East India Company's Observatory at Madras.
There has always been a close link between navigation and astronomy, so its no surprise that some of the Cambridge Observatories books come from the Admiralty.
Many of the books in the Cambridge Observatory collection were given to us by famous individuals and organizations, such as this from the British Association for the Advancement of Science, now: @britsciassoc.bsky.social