Some of the most significant developments in the realm of astrophysics began 100 years ago when a horse and wagon hauled a 1,970-kilogram mirror up Little Saanich Mountain to the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, where it was installed as the main component of the observatory鈥檚 telescope. On May 16, 1918, the first image from space was captured by the telescope, then the second-largest in the world.
That telescope is still working, and the discoveries continue. It鈥檚 a centennial worth celebrating.
The DAO quickly acquired an international reputation for astrophysical research, largely because of astronomer John Stanley Plaskett, the observatory鈥檚 first director. His list of achievements is impressive, among them the discovery a binary star, one of which is still the most massive binary star known, and which bears the name Plaskett鈥檚 Star.
He was the first to calculate the speed at which stars or moving away or toward us, and demonstrated that our home galaxy 鈥� of which the Milky Way is a spiral arm 鈥� is rotating. Other achievements include measuring the size, mass and rotational speed of our galaxy; establishing that the our sun sits two-thirds of the way from the galaxy鈥檚 centre to its edge; and that the solar system completes one galaxial rotation every 22 million years.
In subsequent years, the DAO has been the site of other major discoveries, and the work continues, a journey to the stars that began with a horse and wagon going up a Vancouver Island mountain.
