After two months at sea, the American astronomer, William H. Wright finally arrived in the port of Valparaíso on April 18, 1903. His wife and his assistant H. K Palmer were traveling with him. He had shipped out of San Francisco on February 28 to lead an astronomical mission. The mission was astronomical indeed—not only due to nature of the study but also to dimensions of the task. The team of astronomers was about to begin research on stars of the southern hemisphere . The goal entailed traveling from one end of the planet to the other, with all the necessary equipment. To cross the ocean, with an enormous telescope and dozens of delicate pieces of observatory equipment, they chose the steamship Perú.
The research infrastructure was modeled on the Lick Observatory in Mount Hamilton , near San Jose California . The new observatory was not going to be identical, but the team talked about the “southern twin”—a similar observatory in the faraway southern latitudes. The ship brought the dome that would cover the cutting-edge technology and thus allow them to study the stars and deepen their knowledge of the universe. They also shipped a spectrograph and the complex puzzle of pieces that made it work. The pieces included several precise mirrors that generated the reflections needed for spectroscopy and constituted a window to the newly opened field of astrophysics. By registering the light or spectra of brighter stars, they derive an understanding about stars that were invisible from the mountains in California .
When Wright gazed at Valparaíso, he had a sense that the mirrors were also talking about other dimensions. They too had traveled thousands of miles southward and now faced scenery that was at once exotic and oddly familiar. The landscapes of Chile resembled their home near the Sacramento River delta, and the vegetation, the weather, and the mountains they saw from the ocean provoked a strangely recognizable feeling.
The long years of preparation for the mission ended here in the south. Wright began a new phase in his scientific and human experience. It was going to be a brief phase, Wright thought. He had yet to discover that their work in the southern hemisphere was going to take much longer than they had imagined. He could not have foreseen the importance that astronomy would take on, decades later, in the tiny country at the end of the world. Nor could he imagine that his work would become elemental to the development of science in Chile. He was just a gringo astronomer trying to get off a ship in a southern Pacific port, where he would commence a personal adventure toward unknown spheres of science and transnational relationships.
Thus begins the story of how a little observatory was built in Santiago, Chile on the summit of San Cristóbal Hill . More than a century later, in 2010, the San Cristóbal Observatory was named a historical monument in a country that had become a world astronomical center.1 More than a century earlier, American scientists launched one of Chile’s first astronomical adventures. This is that story.
1.1 Astronomy in Chile Before the Mills Expedition
Understanding the universe has always been a dimension of human inquisitiveness. Every civilization has looked to the skies, wondering what is “up there” where human eyes can no longer see. The possibility of understanding the stellar structure has the most diverse consequences. It is about scientific discovery, certainly; yet, it also rooted in the comprehension of humanity and in the changing visions of the world.2 Trying to learn about the stars, astronomers had a global dimension that inevitably brought together different cultures and societies.3 From the ancient Greeks to the American indigenous cultures, looking to the skies has been part of the human dimension of knowledge.4 Afterwards, the creation and spread of medieval European universities integrated observation and study of the stars.5 During the era of European discoveries and explorations, travelers needed navigation techniques that relied on astronomy. With pioneers such as Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo, astronomy left a profound mark on modern Europe’s scientific production.6
Chile was no exception to this stellar curiosity. The Spaniards who arrived at these lands developed the first written records of southern stars .7 Alonso de Ovalle’s Historica Relacion del Reyno de Chile features a whole chapter on the stars and constellations.8 The Spanish crown instructed explorers to observe a lunar eclipse in 1582, which became the first record of astronomical observation in Chilean territory.9 Centuries later, in the aftermath of independence, Bernardo O’Higgins intended to build an astronomical observatory in Chile; unfortunately, it never materialized.10 Although these observations and project were never more than ephemeral, they shed light on the fascination in the stars that reached the end of the world.
The astronomical team led by Wright in the early twentieth century was not the first in Chile. A different American mission, led by Lt. James Melville Gilliss, arrived in 1849. A year before, following a proposal from the United States Naval Observatory, the United States Congress ordered the formation of a scientific mission that was to travel to the southern hemisphere in order to observe the movements of Venus and Mars and thus measure the distance between the sun and the Earth through solar parallax .11 Gilliss arrived in Chile with three assistants and all the equipment needed to install a provisional observatory on the summit of Santa Lucía Hill in downtown Santiago. At the time, astronomical science was linked to other disciplines such as seismology or atmospheric sciences. According to the nineteenth-century Chilean historian, Diego Barros Arana, the goal of the mission was the following:
[They] had to observe, simultaneously with the northern observatories, Venus and Mars during their respective stationary terms and oppositions in the years 1849, 1850 and 1852. The commission would also make other astronomical observations in the southern hemisphere , and also those regarding meteorology and magnetism, and those which would be possible ...