Troy McConaghy - More Information

Places to Find More Information

The Birr Castle Website

Birr Castle is where Lord Rosse lived. The castle is still in use today, being the home of the current Earl of Rosse (the Seventh). They've refurbished the Leviathan and also have a science center on the grounds. Parsonstown is now known as Birr. Note: This project in Second Life is not associated in any way with the current projects at Birr Castle.

Birr Castle Website Relevant Sections:

Hoskin, Michael, “The Leviathan of Parsonstown: Ambitions and Achievements,” Journal for the History of Astronomy, Vol. 33, Part 1, February 2002, No. 110, pages 57-70.

A great reference if you want more depth on the main stories told during the tour in SL.

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronmical Society, Vol. XXIX, pages 123-30. Strangeways & Walden, London, 1869. Archived in the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS).

A concise biography of Lord Rosse.

Book: The Astronomy of Birr Castle, originally published by The Telescope Trust in 1971, and reprinted in June 1981, by The Tribune Printing and Publishing Group, Birr.

Tubridy, Michael. Reconstruction of the Rosse Six Foot Telescope, Birr Castle, 1998.

Tubridy was the Chief Engineer in charge of reconstructing the Leviathan.

Woods, Thomas. The Monster Telescopes, Erected by the Earl of Rosse, Parsonstown, with an Account of the Manufacutre of the Specula, and Full Descriptions of all the Machinery Connected with These Instruments, Sheilds and Son, Parsonstown, 1845.

Second Edition

Third Edition

Probably the most detailed account of how the telescopes (including the mirrors) were manufactured. This book is remarkable in that previous giant-telescope-makers didn't write anything about how they did it.

Observations of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars Made With the Six-foot and Three-foot Reflectors at Birr Castle From the Year 1848 up to the Year 1878, Scientific Transactions of the Royal Dublin Society, Vol. II, 1878

Parsons, Charles. The Scientific Papers of William Parsons; Third Earl of Rosse , 1800-1867, Percy Lund, Humphries & Co., London, 1926.

McKenna-Lawlor, Susan M.P. Whatever Shines Should be Observed, Kluwer Academic Publishers, The Netherlands, 2003.

Chapter 1 is about Mary Countess of Rosse, who financed the telescopes.

Further details about what happened to the Leviathan can be found here and here.

The BBC Radio science show "The Material World" visited the restored Leviathan in December 2006. Host Quentin Cooper interviewed the Chief Guide John Joyce and the Chief Engineer in charge of the restoration, Michael Tubridy. Listen here.

Some Encyclopedia Articles:

Wikipedia: William Parsons, Third Earl of Rosse

Wikipedia: Leviathan of Parsonstown

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition (1911): William Parsons Rosse

Rosse, William Parsons, 3rd earl of . (2008). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 17, 2008, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9064148

Asimov, Isaac. Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, Second Revised Edition, Doubleday & Company, New York, 1982.

This book has short biographies of 1510 great scientists, including Lord Rosse, Charles Messier, and William Huggins.

More Pictures and Images:

http://www.klima-luft.de/steinicke/ngcic/persons/rosse3.htm

This website has many images of the Third Earl of Rosse and his telescopes. It also has a list of objects he discovered using the Leviathan.

Image of the four ton mirror being delivered to the Science Museum in 1914.

This image conveys the size of the mirror better than any other image I've seen.

Lord Rosse's Drawings of Messier Objects

Part of a website about the objects in the Messier Catalog, assembled by SEDS (Students for the Exploration and Development of Space).

The Canadian Space Agency has some nice pictures of the modern telescope.

Images of the Birr Telescope (modern name) on Flickr.