The Eye of the Observer Though hugely disruptive in many sectors, the pandemic has sparked a new public fascination with astronomy. 2020 saw a wonderful summer of clear nights, an abundance of free time for many and various exciting astronomical events (comets, planetary alignments and supermoons to name a few), and has brought our incredible night sky back into focus. Tom Cayford (LI 2011-16) tells us more.
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hen it comes to astronomy, Marlborough College is uniquely privileged to have one of the most comprehensive observatories in the country, which, having been recently refurbished, offers pupils the rare chance to learn about the stars first hand. Tom Cayford (LI 2011-16) tells us more.
10-inch refracting telescope, a breathtaking instrument of brass and glass, 1.5 tonnes and 3.8 metres in length, perched atop a sturdy iron stump in the middle of the floor. The fact that one could easily pass the dome without knowing it was there is astonishing; it’s like hiding an elephant inside a cardboard box.
From the outside, the small and quite ordinary-looking observatory building goes unnoticed by most pupils as they hurry to and from sports fixtures. Stepping through the unassuming black door, however, one is met by the magnificent Barclay Equatorial
Originally commissioned in 1860 by Joseph Barclay (ancestor of our outgoing Head of Astronomy, Charles Barclay (CR 19972022)), the telescope spent 50 years at the Oxford Radcliffe Observatory researching comets, planets and double stars.
‘The fact that one could easily pass the dome without knowing it was there is astonishing; it’s like hiding an elephant inside a cardboard box..’
The Barclay Equatorial telescope is credited with a number of impressive discoveries – it was the first telescope to measure the oblateness (the flattening at the poles) of Mars, and it recorded the longest ever light curve of a supernova (the data from which were used in the 1950s theory of nuclear synthesis). It was given to the school in 1935 when the Radcliffe moved to South Africa, and it was named after the then President of the Marlburian Club, Sir Basil Blackett KCB (B1 1895-1900). Once installed at the College, it inspired generations of pupils to take up careers in astronomy – most notably Donald Lynden-Bell (C3 1948-53), Director of the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy and President of the Royal Astronomical Society, who first proposed that supermassive black holes exist at the centre of every galaxy and whose theories NASA’s new $10bn James Webb Space Telescope is designed to test. After years of poor maintenance and abuse by unsupervised pupils, however, the Barclay telescope was worn out and tired. A comprehensive restoration effort was therefore undertaken by engineer Norman Walker from 1997 to 2002, and when the observatory reopened, complete with electronically motorised controls, it became the world’s oldest robotic telescope. Walker’s perfectionism led one Oxford professor to describe the work as one of the greatest restoration projects of the 20th century.
