An exciting exhibition which explores hundreds of years of astronomy at St John’s College, Cambridge will open to the public on Monday, 5th October.

‘The Way to the Stars: a history of College astronomy’ will be held in the library exhibition area at St John's College until 21st December 2009.

The exhibition, which is free to the public, commemorates 150 years since the College Observatory was dismantled.

Part of the libraries programme of exhibitions, the collection will allow people to explore beautiful pages of a celestial atlas that shows ornate prints of stellar constellations (pictured above), the papers of John Couch Adams, who predicted the existence and position of Neptune using only mathematics, plus various instruments from the university observatory.

The first of 10 volumes of observations from the Observatory will be on display, along with a clock which stood in the Shrewsbury Tower over two hundred years ago.

The clock, will be accompanied by a telescope and sextant formerly used in the Observatory, and an astrolabe loaned by the Whipple Museum of the History of Science.

Medieval manuscripts that demonstrate how to make and use an astrolabe will also be on display, along with a sketched plan of the old Observatory that was found in an archive of old bills.

Found with the plan was a diatribe which includes complaints about the ‘badly positioned windows’ of the Observatory from an anonymous student in the 19th century.

The exhibition celebrates the International Year of astronomy which is a global celebration of the subject and its contributions to society and culture.

It coincides with the 400th anniversary of the invention of the telescope. Galileo made the first telescope in 1609, an instrument that revolutionized our view of the world and the universe.

The exhibition will also include some of the collection of papers belonging to Sir Fred Hoyle that were donated to the College by his widow, Lady Barbara Hoyle, in 2002.

Hoyle Project Associate and exhibition curator Katie Birkwood said: ‘It’s such a pleasure to be exhibiting all of these wonderful pieces of astronomical history at Cambridge. It’s especially nice for members of the public to have a chance to come into St John’s and learn about Hoyle and his influence on the university today.’

St John’s College Old Library dates back to 1624 and houses the College's magnificent collections of rare books, manuscripts, personal papers of past members, photographs, artefacts and maps. These constitute a nationally recognized research collection, and are still consulted by scholars from all over the world.

The upper part of the Old Library has been kept as it would have been found in the 17th century along with Hoyle’s telescope that he had when he was just 15 years old.

To find out more about ‘The Way to the Stars: a history of College astronomy’ please use the link top right of this page.

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