"Mehr Licht!" were reputed to have been Goethe's dying words. "More light," in a different sense, might also have been a fitting epitaph for William Parsons, Earl of Rosse, who died 130 years ago on October 31st, 1867.
"The Leviathan of Parsonstown," the telescope with a massive 72-inch reflector built by the earl in the grounds of Birr Castle, was able to gather more light than any other instrument in existence at the time, and therefore allowed those who peered through it to see further into space than had ever been the case before.
It made possible the earl's most important discovery - that many galaxies are spiralshaped. The Third Earl of Rosse was conventional in youth, but as it has been quaintly put, "the charms of science gradually weaned him away from all pursuits that interfered with its cultivation". His famous telescope, apart from its size, was unusual in being a reflecting instrument, at a time when these were thought to be inferior to the more traditional "refractors". After much experimentation, Rosse concluded that an alloy of copper and tin, mixed in proportions of two to one, was the most effective material for the reflecting surface. After five attempts and four disasters in five years, the mirror of "the Leviathan" was successfully cast on April 13th, 1842, in the special foundry set up for the purpose in the castle's moat. It weighed 4.5 tons, and was an unprecedented six feet in diameter. Thomas Romney Robinson, Director of Armagh Observatory and remembered by meteorologists as the inventor of the rotating-cup anemometer still used for measuring wind speed, was there to see the casting, and has vividly described the scene: "The sublime beauty can never be forgotten by those who were so fortunate as to be present. "Above, the sky, crowded with stars and illuminated by a most brilliant moon, seemed to look down auspiciously upon their work. Below, the furnaces poured out huge columns of nearly monochromatic yellow flame, and the ignited crucibles during their passage through the air were fountains of red light, producing on the towers of the castle and the foliage of the trees, such accidents of colour and shade as might almost transport fancy to the planets of a contrasted double star." The great six-foot speculum mirror was finished in a steamdriven grinding and polishing machine, also built to the earl's own design. It took two more years to construct the tube of the telescope, which was then elevated in the gap between two walls over 50 feet high. The earl was finally able to peer through his creation in February, 1845.