The Day We Found the Universe - Marcia Bartusiak [20]
His luck was better the following month. With the Crossley fixed, he took several photos of M51, known as the Whirlpool for its wondrous view of the spiraling, face-on. Keeler's four-hour exposure captured aspects of the nebula never before seen, largely due to the steady air above Mount Hamilton. Keeler sent a transparency of this exposure to his friend George Ellery Hale, director of the Yerkes Observatory, where it took Hales breath away. “Everyone in the Observatory considers [this picture] to be far superior to anything of the kind they have ever seen or expected to see,” Hale responded enthusiastically.
There was something even more consequential in the image, although Keeler didn't appreciate the import right away. Surrounding M51 in the picture were seven more nebulae—though smaller and fainter. In a brief note to the Royal Astronomical Society in London, he listed the exact locations of these nebulae and described them. Some were round, others spindle-shaped or elongated. And that was only the beginning. “Several other faint nebulae, the positions of which were not noted, were observed during the search,” he wrote. “In fact, this region seems to be filled with small, apparently unconnected nebulae, large numbers of which would doubtless be revealed by long-exposure photographs.” It was a fascinating find, but he just assumed it was an uncommon grouping of nebulae, likely confined to that sector of the sky.
Photo of Whirlpool galaxy (M51) taken by James Keeler in 1899 with the
Crossley telescope. One faint nebula seen in upper left.
(Copyright UC Regents/Lick Observatory)
When a selection from Keeler's growing archive of pictures was prominently displayed at the Third Conference of Astronomers and Astrophysicists, held at Yerkes in September 1899, it created great excitement. Astronomers formerly skeptical of a reflector's value, such as E. E. Barnard, began to change their opinion. Barnard, who had fled from Lick to Yerkes during the Holden debacle, just stood in front of Keeler's photographs for hours, taking in every scrumptious detail of the Orion nebula, the Pleiades, and the M51 spiral.
Media savvy, Keeler knew the value of a good pitch in helping both the observatory and his career. After a well-publicized solar eclipse, he had advised a fellow astronomer, who was about to convey his eclipse observations to a conference, to dwell “on the successes rather than on the failures. If you were to tell a reporter that three plates out of ten were failures, he would receive a totally different impression from what he would if you gave him the equivalent statement that seven out of ten plates were successes.” Keeler sent copies of his best pictures to the Royal Astronomical Society, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, all institutions that could influence opinions within the scientific community. He also made sure that Crossley, the reflector's former owner, received a particularly nice print of the Orion nebula. “The finest I have ever seen,” replied the English businessman. “It proves to me how important it is not only to have a powerful instrument but also a site where it can be used to the greatest possible advantage.” Getting his results widely distributed seems to have paid off for Keeler. In 1900 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, a year after he had received its prestigious Henry Draper Medal for astrophysical research. He was now one of America's leading astronomers.
In late summer, right before the Yerkes conference, Keeler had started to examine the faint nebulae more closely. He took a one-hour exposure of NGC 6946, a fuzzy patch first noticed by astronomer William Herschel at the end of the eighteenth century and listed as the 6,946th object in the New General Catalogue, published by J. L. E. Dreyer in 1888. Upon developing his plate