@psuedenham

No prizes for guessing where we are. Amazing meal at @ducassesurseine celebrating several important birthdays (friends’ not ours). Forgot how truly spectacular this city is.

Can’t get this word out of my head

How we see what we want to see. A beautiful face ..or a bit of graphics

I’m thrilled to be the guest in the latest episode of the podcast Patented, hosted by the wonderful @thedallascampbell. Tune in for a fun half hour on the history of the telescope. Link in bio!!

Thank you @lilyandlimes for a beautiful Easter table

Inspired by the amazing courage and resolve of the Ukrainian people.

Alfie the Great. The best dog ever. You brought us 14 years of love, fun, and utter joy. Goodbye handsome boy.

This is Uranus, the giant ice planet discovered by William Herschel in 1781. Later observers noticed that its orbit didn’t quite match the path predicted by Newton’s laws of gravity. Some hypothesised that another, unknown, planet must be exerting a gravitational pull, diverting Uranus from its predicted orbit. French astronomer LeVerrier calculated where such a planet might be and sent his prediction to the Berlin Observatory in September 1846. That very night, the giant planet Neptune was observed through telescopes for the first time, almost exactly where LeVerrier predicted it would be. Utterly mind-blowing. #astronomy #mathematics #telescope #newtonslaw #gravity #historyofastronomy #historyofseeing

German-born siblings William and Caroline Hershel built the Great Forty Foot Telescope in William’s garden in Slough. William was famous for discovering the planet Uranus in 1781, the first new planet discovered since antiquity. During its construction King George III and the Archbishop of Canterbury walked through the tube, the King saying to the cleric: Come my Lord Bishop, I will show you the way to Heaven!’ Share the story of telescopes and other inventions that changed the way we see the world with someone you love this Christmas: A History of Seeing in Eleven Inventions. Link in bio! #astronomy #historyofseeing #historyofastronomy #telescope #stargazing

In 1655, Christiian Huygens made the first significant new astronomical discovery in nearly 50 years when he viewed the rings of Saturn for the first time through a telescope that was 23 feet long. He continued to experiment with ever larger devices, including one that reached 120 feet! Ever larger telescopes allowed greater magnification and reduced visual errors, and much bigger ones were to come… #astronomy #historyofastronomy #huygens #telescope #historyofseeing #stargazing

When Galileo trained his telescope on the night sky he saw things no human being had ever seen before. The Moon was not a smooth, perfect sphere as had been assumed for millennia. It was scarred and pitted like the imperfect Earth. There were four small planets that moved across the sky with Jupiter, changing position as they went. Galileo deduced they were Jupiter’s moons - an astounding conclusion when conventional wisdom still held Earth as the centre of the universe. As for the stars, there were many, many, many more than anyone had ever imagined. #galileo #astronomy #historyofastronomy #historyofseeing #stargazing #telescope @nasa @sea.museum @sciencemuseum

Martin Luther’s 1517 posting of 95 challenges to the Catholic Church may have remained an academic debate were it not for the printing press. Reformers printed the theses as a pamphlet and distributed it all around Germany, leading eventually to the Reformation. Protestants had a very different view of the role of seeing in religion. They rejected much of Catholic imagery as idolatry - literally erasing it from the walls in many cases - and focused instead on spreading the written scriptures in printed bibles. Read all about it and much much more in A History of Seeing in Eleven Inventions, link in bio. #historyofseeing #nonfictionbooks #nonfiction #arthistory #historyofscience #inventions #historyofinventions #inventionsthatchangedtheworld #printingpress @thehistorypressuk @flint_books @britishlibrary @britishlibraryshop @optometry_today @cubitts #bookstagram #bookrecommendations