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Forensic Astronomer Solves Walt Whitman Mystery
New Scientist has a piece on the uncommon art of forensic astronomy. Texas State University physicist Donald Olson has solved the mystery of Walt Whitman's meteor poem, thanks to clues found in an 1860 painting by Frederic Church. "Before we were done we had collected 300 records of observations [of the event]. I think this may be the most observed, and most documented, single meteor event in history. From the Great Lakes to New England, every town that had a newspaper wrote about that meteor. ... So we've got one of America's greatest landscape artists, Frederic Church, watching the meteor from Catskill, and we've got one of America's greatest poets, Walt Whitman, watching the meteor from New York City." The field of forensic astronomy may have gotten its start more than 30 years before, when art historian Roberta Olson argued convincingly that the lifelike comet in Giotto's "Adoration of the Magi" in Padua, Italy, in fact depicted Halley's Comet in its visitation of 1301.
Well that explains a lot! I kept thinking that people were trying to give me stuff.
The young prince of England was winked at by the laureate poet, in pre-internet emoticons!
With attachment? What prescience!
Soo, you are saying that this research into an icy mudball is all wet?
--- Mercutio was right.
Halley's comment.
In those days, the little town newspapers used boilerplate from the larger city newspapers and only added in a few local articles...
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Now get off my lawn!
Ye Gods! You are old!
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Yeah but putting "forensic" in the title draws the CSI fans.
You could say...*puts on shades*...it's the star attraction.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel