About the Observatory

Mr Bowden’s Museum is interested in more than just history and culture!

We love science as well as the history of science, but this doesn’t stop us doing some science of our own!

Whether you consider the Observatory a part of Mr Bowden’s Museum, or its own stand-alone institution, some of the data, projects and experiments undertaken by it will be shared here.

Astronomy

When Mr Bowden was small, he was gifted a F900 ‘Bushmaster’ refracting telescope for Christmas, and since then it has been his gateway to the universe. Inspired, as well, by the work of Charles Green and Captain Cook observing the Transit of Venus on June the 3rd, 1769, from Tahiti, Mr Bowden decided to engage in amateur astronomy in earnest as an adult.

With this telescope and some sundry additional binoculars, Mr Bowden’s Observatory has been engaged in stargazing, observing the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and even Uranus (on a particularly clear night), and hunting for comets.

Notes from the Astronomy Journal will be digitised and uploaded to this website in due course, along with photographs.

The story of the Observatory’s interest in Terrestrial Magnetism is long and complicated, but the short version is basically during Mr Bowden’s research fixation on the Transit of Venus he came across fellow Adelaideian, Brady Haran, and his YouTube channel, Objectivity. The channel explores the history of science primarily through the collections of the Royal Society of London, who hold Captain Cook’s instruments from the Endeavour voyage.

Doing a deep dive on Objectivity’s catalogue of videos brought up several about terrestrial magnetism, and how it was measured in the 1700s and 1800s, which led in turn via John Herschel’s book, A Manual of Scientific Enquiry and its article on measuring magnetism by Colonel Sabine, to James Clark Ross, the Erebus voyage, Rossbank Observatory in Tasmania, to the excellent website of Ruru Observatory in New Zealand. On the Ruru website, (an older, but kindred project to that of Mr Bowden’s Museum) the owner presents several projects for making your own magnetometer for measuring fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field.

In due course, Mr Bowden’s Observatory will engage in the making of a magnetometer to Ruru’s design, which does require some technical knowledge to be developed in the field of Arduino, as well as a more permanent location for a ‘Magnetic Pavilion’ for undisturbed measurement. So, watch this space!

In the meantime, check out Ruru Observatory here.

Finally, it should be no surprise that the Observatory is interested in weather phenomena. Weather is often the bane of the Astronomical Department’s existence, with cloud cover and wind causing difficulties using the telescope - so why not study it and record it.

Previously, the Observatory has relied on some less than durable weather stations purchased from a major Australian hardware retailer, but in the future we may move to more robust examples. Especially ones which can record weather data automatically and save it separately to a computer record.

This is, like the other components, an ongoing exercise but one which we hope to present here in due course.