The lost discoveries of E.E Barnard
THE LIFE OF LEGENDARY US astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard is a rags-to-riches story. Born in 1857, he endured an impoverished childhood in Nashville during the Civil War era. Before his ninth birthday, he was already working as a photographer’s assistant in order to support his widowed mother. Despite severe economic hardships and the lack of a comprehensive education, he rose to become one of the leading astronomers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
At 19, Barnard purchased a 125-mm Byrne refractor for US$380, which amounted to two-thirds of his annual salary. The lure of a US$200 prize for finding new comets offered by Rochester, New York businessman and philanthropist Hulbert Harrington Warner, prompted him to start searching for them, and he discovered nine between 1881 and 1887. The prize money helped finance his first home, which he called ‘Comet House’.
During this period, he took undergraduate classes in mathematics and physics at Vanderbilt University. He also made several astonishing discoveries using both Vanderbilt’s 15-cm Cooke refractor and his own telescope. These include the Pacman Nebula (NGC 281), the California Nebula (NGC 1499) the eponymous Barnard’s Galaxy (NGC 6822), and an independent discovery of the Rosette Nebula (NGC 2237).
Although Barnard lacked advanced training, Edward Singleton Holden, the first director of Lick Observatory, offered him a position. Holden was impressed with Barnard’s visual prowess and anticipated the attention new comet discoveries would bring to the fledgling observatory. The staff for the world’s first permanent mountaintop observatory also included the pioneering spectroscopist James Keeler and the skilled double-star observer Sherbourne Wesley Burnham.
Barnard jumped at the prospect of using the new 90-cm (36-inch) Clark refractor — the largest in the world at the time — under the inky skies seen from atop Mount
