You’ve probably seen the grainy, haunting images from the James Webb Space Telescope recently. They’re crisp, colorful, and frankly, a bit overwhelming. But there was a time when catching just a single speck of light on a plate was considered a borderline miracle. If you dig into the history of astrophotography—the kind of stuff that pops up in The New York Times "On This Day" style archives—you’ll find a lot of praise for the first star ever captured.
That was Vega.
But what about the second? History tends to ignore the runner-up. In the world of 19th-century science, being second usually meant you were just a footnote in a dusty ledger at Harvard. However, the "second star ever photographed" story isn't just a repeat of the first; it was the moment astronomers realized photography wasn't just a parlor trick. It was a legitimate tool for mapping the universe.
The Night Vega Changed Everything
To understand the second star, we have to look at the night of July 16–17, 1850.
William Cranch Bond, the director of the Harvard College Observatory, teamed up with a local Boston daguerreotypist named John Adams Whipple. They weren't using digital sensors. They were using a 15-inch Great Refractor telescope and a literal plate of silver-plated copper fumes.
They pointed the massive telescope at Vega (Alpha Lyrae). It’s a bright, blue-white beacon in the summer sky. They let the light soak into the plate for about 90 to 100 seconds. When they developed it, there it was: a tiny, distinct spot. It was the first time a star other than our Sun had been "recorded" by something other than a human hand.
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The New York Times, though it wouldn't be founded for another year (September 1851), has frequently revisited this milestone in its science coverage over the decades. It’s often cited as the "birth of the digital eye," even if the "digital" part was still a century away.
So, Which Star Was Second?
Here is where the history gets a little "insider baseball." After the success with Vega, Bond and Whipple didn't just pack up and go home. They were obsessed.
According to Harvard’s own "Plate Stacks" historical records and the Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, the team immediately started pushing the limits of their daguerreotype process.
The second star ever photographed—or rather, the next successful targets in that 1850–1851 window—included Castor and Beta Lyrae.
The Significance of Castor
While Vega was a solo act, Castor (Alpha Geminorum) was a different beast entirely. It’s a multiple star system. When Whipple and Bond captured Castor, they weren't just proving they could see a star; they were proving they could resolve double stars.
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Basically, they showed that a camera could distinguish between two points of light that might look like one to a blurry human eye. That was a massive deal for 1850s physics. It meant the "camera" could be more objective than the "observer."
Why the NYT Cares About This Now
If you’re searching for "second star ever photographed NYT," you’re likely seeing references to the Paper of Record’s deep dives into the "Great Refractor" at Harvard. The Times has a penchant for highlighting how these early "failures" and "seconds" led to the modern era of CCDs (Charge-Coupled Devices) and the eventual death of the glass plate.
Honestly, the second star is arguably more important than the first. The first is a fluke. The second is a proof of concept.
The Struggles of 1850s Tech
It's hard to overstate how annoying this process was. You couldn't just "click" a button.
- The Clockwork Issue: The Earth is spinning. If you leave a telescope still for 100 seconds, the star becomes a streak. Bond had to use a "driving clock" to move the multi-ton telescope at the exact speed of the Earth's rotation.
- Sensitivity: Daguerreotypes were "slow." They were great for portraits of people who could sit still, but stars are incredibly faint.
- Chemical Chaos: If the humidity was off in Cambridge, the plate wouldn't take.
Because of these hurdles, there was a huge gap between these first experiments and the widespread use of photography in astronomy. It wasn't until the 1870s and 80s, when Henry Draper (another name often mentioned in NYT science retrospectives) started using "dry plates," that we began seeing nebulae and distant galaxies.
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Why It Matters Today
We live in an era of "pretty pictures" from space. We see the Pillars of Creation in high definition and forget that someone once spent a whole night in a freezing dome in Massachusetts just to get a white dot on a piece of metal.
The transition from Vega to Castor represents the moment astronomy shifted from a visual hobby of the elite to a data-driven science. If we couldn't photograph the second star, we wouldn't have the Henry Draper Catalogue, which classified hundreds of thousands of stars and eventually helped us figure out what the universe is actually made of.
Actionable Insights for History Buffs
If you want to see the "real" history beyond the headlines, here is what you can actually do:
- Visit the Harvard Plate Stacks (Virtually): Harvard has digitized thousands of these early glass plates. You can see the actual progression from those first dots to the massive surveys of the 20th century.
- Search the NYT TimesMachine: If you have a subscription, use the "TimesMachine" to search for "astrophotography" or "Harvard Observatory" between 1851 and 1900. You’ll find the original, breathless reports of these discoveries.
- Look for Vega and Castor Tonight: If it’s summer, look for the Summer Triangle to find Vega. If it’s winter/spring, look for the "twins" of Gemini to find Castor. Knowing that these were the first "models" for the world's first space cameras makes looking at them a lot more interesting.
The history of the "second" star reminds us that science is rarely about the single "Aha!" moment. It’s about the "Can we do it again?" moment that follows.
Next Steps:
To see how these early plates look compared to modern data, you can check out the PHDS (Project PHaEDRA) at Harvard, which is transcribing the notebooks of the women "computers" who analyzed these very photographs a few decades later.