{"id":10916,"date":"2011-07-11T22:51:35","date_gmt":"2011-07-11T21:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/?p=10916"},"modified":"2013-08-28T01:18:30","modified_gmt":"2013-08-28T00:18:30","slug":"herschels-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/2011\/07\/11\/herschels-animals\/","title":{"rendered":"The Moon Hoaxing Scandal of 1835"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Herschell<\/a><\/p>\n

The fantastic weather in Oxford yesterday meant museum visits took a back seat to a good punting session on the Cherwell (a violation of physics in its own right with me at the helm).<\/p>\n

\"Oxford<\/a>
Oxford<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But we did get a half hour in the Museum of the History of Science<\/a> , where I snapped this papier mache box lid, a great early example of newspapers not letting facts get in the way of a good story.\u00a0 For what they lacked in hacking scandals in 1835, they made up for in hoaxing, in stories like the one to which this exhibit relates: The Great Moon Hoax.<\/p>\n

The picture is a satirical sketch of the astronomer Sir John Herschel, in a scene based on a series of reports by Richard Adams Locke for the New York Sun in 1835, supposedly describing observations made by Herschel at his South Africa observatory.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
From the New York Sun 1835 (Wikicommons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You can read up on the detail at the museum of hoaxes<\/a>), but in this rendition, which is new to me, I particularly like the weird equipment combo Herschel’s minions are wielding around him: some sort of camera obscura \/ microscope mash-up by the looks of things.\u00a0 Maybe those instruments were more familiar than telescopes? \u00a0 Or, more likely, the\u00a0 journo just let his imagination get the better of him.\u00a0 Either way, I guess it’s still the little winged moon-men that steal the show.<\/p>\n

The exhibit put me in mind of two lectures on a similar tack I enjoyed in the Royal Society’s History of Science series. \u00a0 You might like to check them out:<\/p>\n

‘Fleas, lice, and an elephant on the moon’\u00a0 by Dr Felicity Henderson (Sept 24 2010)<\/p>\n

‘The Telescope at 400: a Satirical Journey’ by Richard Dunn (April 24 2009)<\/p>\n

(both can be found by tracking down to the correct dates at the Royal Society podcast\/vidcast page here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fantastic weather in Oxford yesterday meant museum visits took a back seat to a good punting session on the Cherwell (a violation of physics in its own right with me at the helm). But we did get a half hour in the Museum of the History of Science , where I snapped this papier … Continue reading The Moon Hoaxing Scandal of 1835<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[638,568,101,1109,608,8],"tags":[1202,892,1201],"class_list":["post-10916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-astronomy","category-fun","category-history","category-history-of-science-history","category-media","category-museums","tag-great-moon-hoax","tag-herschel","tag-john-herschel"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/800px-Great-Moon-Hoax-1835-New-York-Sun-lithograph-298px-476x3381.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkpOr-2Q4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10916"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17758,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10916\/revisions\/17758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}