I viaggi dell'equatoriale di Merz: le vicende umane e scientifiche che hanno accompagnato il telescopio a Napoli, a Terranova e a Faenza

• Main Authors: PERROTTA, Francesco, GARGANO, MAURO
• Other Authors: ITA
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English; Italian
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Hanno; Merz; Nobile; Terranova
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12386/24927; https://doi.org/10.23739/9788869520495/c28; http://www.paviauniversitypress.it/articolo/9788869520495-c28/474

After fifty years from the inauguration of the Astronomical Observatory of Naples, its telescopes were unfortunately no more up-to-date. Thanks to the funds given by the ministry of Pubblica Istruzione, Ernesto Capocci ed Annibale de Gasparis could partially renew the instrumentation buying in 1863 an equatorial refractor by Merz. The telescope, installed in the eastern dome, was used for limited observational campaigns. In 1870 it was moved to Terranova di Sicilia by Arminio Nobile, who participated to the Italian expedition for the solar eclipses of 22 December. Back in Naples, the telescope was rarely used, and dismounted in 1892. At the beginnings of the 1920s the Merz telescope gained new attention as Azeglio Bemporad decide to lend it temporarily to Giovan Battista Lacchini, an amateur astronomer in Faenza. In ten years Lacchini made a long and accurate series of photometric observations of variable stars. The scientific relevance of his researches, and the recommendations of Bemporad and some other astromers earned him to be hired as astronomer in the Observatory of Catania. “But passion often is not enough”. The new director of Capodimonte Luigi Carnera asked back the telescope, and Lacchini sent it reluctantly to Capodimonte. Here it was again underutilized. Analyzing the documents in the Historical Archives of the Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte the ups and downs of the Merz refractor, a “travelling” telescope, are recalled.