Harvard College Observatory: Solon Bailey and the southern station at Arequipa

Late in 1888, Harvard College Observatory staff member Solon Bailey departed for Peru on a steamship and railway journey, finally reaching Lima in March 1889. From there, he traveled to the town of Chosica to explore the local environs and inspected various mountain peaks in search of a suitable site to establish Harvard’s southern hemisphere observatory. A nameless peak was finally chosen high above the town of Chosica and called “Mount Harvard.”¹ Bailey’s first impulse had been to name the peak “Mount Pickering” but, when informed by mail, the observatory’s director declined the honor.

The first necessity was to build a trail by which to deliver the nearly 100 boxes along with the 8-inch Bache telescope up the mountain. In the interest of hurrying the process along, Bailey and his family helped to provide labor. Of the area in general, Bailey noted: “From the time of our first visit to Mount Harvard on March 11 throughout the rest of the year the region seemed extremely dry and barren. The ravine, however, through which our path to the mountain led, showed unmistakable evidence of tremendous rainfall sometime in the past.”²

Once the observatory was finally established and in working order, the process commenced of recording the splendors of the southern sky on astrophotographic glass plates. The first boxes arrived back at Harvard in August 1889, though it was found that some of the plates had suffered slight damage during shipment. Photographic work continued at Mount Harvard through the Peruvian autumn.

Meanwhile, other potentially desirable sites for a more permanent establishment were inspected, including the Atacama Desert plateau in Chile. Eventually, in late 1889 and early 1890, fog and mists enveloped Mount Harvard and were followed by heavy rains. Bailey had reported to Pickering that an alternative site might exist at Arequipa, Peru. As the year progressed, the weather remained unstable through the summer with more heavy rain. The buildings at the observatory site, with walls constructed of building paper, began to sag and collapse.

Given the discouraging reports from Peru, Pickering decided to move the southern station to Arequipa as its permanent site, and work ceased at Mount Harvard. The original site was dismantled and the instrumentation packed for shipment. Bailey and his party moved on to Arequipa, where the observational and photographic work continued until May 9, 1891. Among the instruments installed at Arequipa was the 13-inch Boyden refractor made by Alvan Clark & Sons. The station itself became known as Boyden Station.

Over the course of two years, Bailey had managed to establish the magnitudes of approximately 8,000 bright stars thus completing the Harvard Photometry.³ He had also obtained around 2,500 photographic plates of the spectra of the southern stars with the aid of his brother Marshall, a professional photographer, and of his Peruvian assistant Elias Vieyra. On May 15, 1891, Solon Bailey and his family departed Arequipa. William Pickering then took over the station but was soon dismissed, and Bailey returned on February 25, 1893, remaining in charge until 1919.

References

1. Bessie Z. Jones and Lyle G. Boyd, Harvard College Observatory. The First Four Directorships (Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 291, doi:10.4159/harvard.9780674418806.
2. Solon I. Bailey, “A catalogue of 7922 southern stars observed with the meridian photometer during the years 1889–91,” Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, 34, 1895, p. 22, https://scixplorer.org/abs/1895AnHar..34....1B/abstract.
3. Jones and Boyd, Harvard College Observatory, op. cit. (1) p. 291.

Cite this resource

Bretislav Friedrich and Maria McEachern, “The Henry Draper Memorial and the role of philanthropy,” Harvard College Observatory history guide, American Institute of Physics, 2026, https://www.aip.org/history/harvard-observatory/draper-memorial-philanthropy .

Note that this material was originally developed in concert with the Williamina Fleming history guide as part of the Women in the History of Quantum Physics collection.