moon

One Giant Leap…

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Chris Parkin, the Museum’s Lead Learning Officer, reflects on the Museum’s Apollo 11 celebration, ‘One Giant Leap…’

20th July brought a plethora of commemorative events celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing and those first steps taken by Neil Armstrong as he uttered the famous words, “One small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.”

But for a Museum with little in its collection from the second half of the 20th-century save a Sinclair pocket calculator, circa 1975 – I just about remember it as a school boy and the clicky feel of its buttons and purple readout – this occasion presented something of a challenge of how we should celebrate.

For the family event ‘One Giant Leap’ we took a different tack, celebrating instead the giant leap made by the invention of the telescope in the early 17th-century beginning with Galileo’s drawings of the moon and those of his English contemporary, Thomas Harriot.

Visitors were invited to peer through replica models of Galileo’s telescopes at images of the moon and to draw what they saw – quite a challenge when the aperture of his telescope would barely span a quarter of the moon in one go. This little girl certainly rose to the challenge recording the topography of the moon in a beautiful pencil drawing.

Credit: Christopher Parkin

Among the better known exhibits at the Museum are a superb pastel drawing of the moon by the celebrated 18th-century artist, John Russell, which hangs in the entrance stairwell and his ‘selenographia’, a moon globe for which he provided the detailed artwork drawn through a Herschel-type telescope. This inspired another activity during making moon globes. Using images provided by NASA converted into gores (the lozenge-shaped pieces from which are pasted onto a sphere to make the globe), up to 40 moon globes were made by visitors over the course of the event. Visitors were invited to identify their ideal landing spot!

Credit: Christopher Parkin

Other activities included lunar trails to discover a range of references to the moon among finely crafted dials and mathematical instruments on display in the museum, and the opportunity for visitors to make their very own Oxford lunar phase calculator.

Credit: Christopher Parkin

‘One Giant Leap’… was fabulously successful and fun-filled with over 200 participants. As ever, we are hugely grateful to those fine volunteers who helped deliver this event.

Drawing the Moon

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Art and science have always been intertwined. In this guest post the artist Jo Lane discusses her most recent artwork inspired by John Russell’s Moon drawing that hangs in the Museum.

John Russell's moon pastel, 1795

As a regular visitor to the History of Science Museum I have been inspired by the abundance of objects to view and research. I am most fascinated by the incredible Moon pastel drawing by John Russell that hangs in the stairwell. At each visit to the Museum I stand and stare at it, in awe of its beauty, its condition, its age, the enormity of the paper and the colours of the handmade pastels. I like to think about the optical technology that was available in the 1700s, such as the Dollond Telescope, that enabled Russell to copy what he saw into this epic drawing.

My piece, ‘emergency on earth’, is a drawn reproduction and interpretation of this beautiful five foot pastel. You can still faintly see the grid lines I used to copy the Moon in the photographs. My contemporary drawing is a different medium to Russell’s. Instead of pastel it is graphite on black paper, which produces a sheen when light is directed onto it. A little aluminium powder, phthalo blue pigment and chalk hint at some of the colourings in Russell’s original.

When Russell was creating his pastel the industrial revolution was just commencing. Now, a mere 224 years later and after the acceleration of industry and technology, human output of pollutants and greenhouse gas has grown dramatically. I have used an emergency warning beacon in front the drawing to bring attention to this – as if Earth’s emergency is now reflected on the Moon.

When creating my artwork I became aware of how respectfully we must treat our planet and everything on it, and the work being done towards this. ‘emergency on earth…’ is an ode to those scientists and artists past, present and future.

By Jo Lane

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Jo previously had her artwork shown the Lumen Crypt Gallery in London, as part of Out of Darkness group exhibition.

The Search for Snoopy

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by Peter Ells

Apollo10: Charlie Brown and Snoopy modules

Snoopy (left) and Charlie Brown (right)

 On 18th May 1969, Apollo 10 was launched as a final rehearsal for Neil Armstrong’s historic moon landing, which was to take place in July. The crew were Commander Tom Stafford, lunar module pilot Gene Cernan, and command module pilot John Young. These astronauts had named their command module Charlie Brown and the lunar module Snoopy, after the famous cartoon characters. On day five of the mission, the astronauts achieved an orbit around the moon, coming to within 60 miles of the surface.

Apollo 10 Snoopy module

The crew compartment of Snoopy, photographed from Charlie Brown.

While Young remained in Charlie Brown, Stafford and Cernan entered Apollo 10 Snoopy moduleSnoopy and descended to within 9 miles of the lunar surface. They jettisoned the (spider-legged) descent stage, which crashed into the moon, and returned to dock with Charlie Brown, as shown in the second photo. Stafford and Cernan then re-joined Young in Charlie Brown.

The crew compartment of Snoopy (we’ll just call it ‘Snoopy’ from now on) had completed its task in the mission. Snoopy was detached from Charlie Brown, and it was remotely commanded to fire its main engine so as to burn all of its fuel. This resulted in Snoopy being launched into orbit around the sun. All three astronauts returned safely to earth in Charlie Brown.

Since 2011 a group of amateur astronomers, led by the Faulkes robotically-controlled Telescope Project, with assistance from NASA and some professionals, have been attempting to find Snoopy. This is a daunting project: “To say it’s like finding a needle in a haystack is doing a disservice to the haystacks,” said project director Paul Roche. Snoopy is only about four metres in diameter.

Over the years there have been several tentative sightings, the most recent being in May 2019, but none has been confirmed so far. The work has not been wasted because many new asteroids (rocks orbiting the sun) and comets have been discovered.

If Snoopy were to be found it would be feasible – though very expensive – to bring it back to earth using current technology. Several space entrepreneurs have the ability, finance, and adventurous disposition to carry out such a recovery.

The conical command module Charlie Brown is on permanent display in the Science Museum in London. (The cylindrical service module was jettisoned and burned up in the earth’s atmosphere during preparations for Charlie Brown’s landing back on earth). It would be wonderful to think that Peanuts might one day be reunited with Charlie Brown – at least for a brief inter-museum loan!