From our Guest Blogger July/August 2025 Skyward by Dr. David Levy

 

Skyward for July 2025

 

By

 

Doveed.

 

David H. Levy

 

Of Minerva the telescope, Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of   The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám of Naishápúr, and Messier 40

 

Last month I sent some of you a photograph of Eureka, the 12-inch Dobsonian reflector that I claimed I now use for most of my comet hunting.  That statement, I am afraid, is not entirely true. Since May 18, 1967, the day after I very nearly got expelled from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada for arguing with Miss Isabel Williamson, its Director of Observational Activities, I have enjoyed and loved this little 6-inch f/4 reflector for more than 58 years.  Even though I have not found a comet with it, I have used it to sight many known comets, and I must say that I use it for at least half of my comet hunting.  I was using it while I was a student at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, where, in Dr. Roger Lewis’s Victorian Literature class, I was introduced to The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.  Omar was a resident, probably the most famous resident, of Nishapur, a city in northeastern Iran, and there exists a beautiful mausoleum in his memory there.   I concentrated on the first stanza only, and it was well worth my trouble, and I add to it  the penultimate 100^th stanza:

 

Wake! For the Sun, who scatter’d into flight

The stars before him from the Field of Night,

   Drives Night along with them from Heav’n, and strikes

The Sultán’s Turret with a Shaft of Light.

 

Yon rising Moon that looks for us again—

How oft hereafter will she wax and wane;

How oft hereafter will she look for us

Through this same Garden—and for one in vain!

 

At the time this poem’s tranasation appeared, interest in science was at a height, especially with the appearance of Darwin’s The Origin of Species in 1859, the same year as the Fitzgerald translation and reinterpretation.  Academically, this poem attracted most of the members of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, though the English population of the time thoroughly embraced the poem’s thought and feeling.  Even today, this poem encourages many people to enjoy both the poem and the Sun, Moon, and stars that it embraces.

 

                A few years before I began my time at Acadia, and before my near-expulsion, I was completing my observations of Messier’s 109 object catalogue. “It was Messier’s mistake,” Miss Williamson explained.  “When you locate the rest, we credit you with M40.”

 

                I saw Messier 40 the last three nights.  Messier himself found it in 1764 while searching for a nebula discovered near Megrez, in Ursa Major, by Johannes Hevelius.  Hevelius, who was not using a telescope, noticed a touch of nebulosity.  Messier could not confirm this but he did record two faint stars.  Today most us call M40 Messier’s mistake, but I disagree with this.  He probably understood his friend’s naked eye view of the two stars, which even to him could show some nebulosity, and left the pair in his catalogue.  Could the pair look nebulous to us when viewed without a telescope, just as groups of stars like the Beehive and Pleiades look nebulous to today’s viewers when seen without a telescope?

 

                To find M40, simply locate Megrez and move a little more than one degree to its northeast.  There will be 70 Ursae Majoris.  Continue another quarter degree to the two stars that form Messier 40.  Remember that this is not a double star, but instead two stars at different distances from Earth.

 

Finally, Messier 40 offers a bonus. Close to the east of the two stars lie two very nice spiral galaxies, NGC 4290 and NGC 4284.  You need a very dark sky to catch these, but they are lovely.

 

So what do Minerva, the The Rubáiyát, and Messier 40 have in common?  Nothing, you might say.  Minerva is a pile of metal and glass loosely held together with glue and pressure.  The Fitzgerald is a poem.  Messier 40 is a mistake.

 

    No.  Not at all.  Minerva has given me 58 years of passion and pleasure being under the sky, whose rising Moon only adds to the joy.  And over centuries, people like Charles Messier and Hevelius shared that same incredible craving for the stars, including the tiny pair of distant suns collectively called Messier 40.