A grand vision of Victorian architecture and engineering

Let me tell you about the very rich,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his short story, “The Rich Boy." “They are different from you and me.”

Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum entrance. It leads into what was originally the kitchen. 

by Ariella Brown

Those of us who are not rich and wonder at just how different their lives were than our own, can catch glimpses of it in tours of elaborate mansions that were once the homes of the wealthy elite. Certainly, that’s a big draw for tourists to Newport, Rhode Island. It was the place to summer in for the super rich and fashionable during the Gilded Age. But before there was one area designated by fashionable society, the rich may have chosen any area, and one man chose his own birthplace for the most well-appointed summer home ever built in the United States at the time. 

                       Interior view of conservatory (photo by Ariella Brown)

    Exterior view of conservatory (photo by Ariella Brown)

Grand plans

LeGrande Lockwood, one of only a handful of millionaires in the country at the start of the Civil War, and the first millionaire native of Norwalk, Connecticut, opted for his birthplace as the neighborhood in which he would build his summer home. It still stands there, though, not quite in its full glory, as a registered historic landmark called the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum.

The interior can be seen through a docent-led tour, which is limited to the first floor during the colder months due to the difficulty of heating the entire structure. The tour reveals interesting facets of the history of the house and its occupants, as well as details of its construction and design.

You can experience a kind of virtual mini-tour through this video:

The house’s appearance was largely inspired by the French chateaus that Lockwood had seen and admired on his trips to Europe to raise funds for the American Civil War. In fact, the mansion is considered one of the earliest examples of French Empire Style architecture in the United States.

Detail of the ceiling and French wallpaper. a roll
was found in  the house, which enabled
reproductions and restoration and restoration.

While the architectural style was rooted in tradition, the features and comforts utilized the very latest in technology for the times. This house was equipped things you may expect from that time period, like gas lighting, plumbing that allows for both hot and cold water, flush toilets, and central heating powered by coal. But it also includes some things you may not have anticipated.

Even when electricity was not set up for lighting, it was used for a burglar alarm. Most surprisingly -- and, possibly, the most important feature for a summer house -- this house had central air-conditioning, though it didn’t run on electricity.

To check on times for tours, see lockwoodmathewsmansion.com/your-visit/

Related : Have desk, will travel

Sights that are out of this world

Our view of the night sky reveals only a tiny fraction of the stars in space. Our view is obscured by light pollution as well as our position in the galaxy and the distorting effects of our atmosphere on the light that does make it over. One more factor is the the fact that some of these stars are so far away that their light is still working its way over to us.

The HST captured this stunning image of Messier 3 in April 2019. 

Messier 3 Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, G. Piotto et al.

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) grants those of us stuck on earth a view from space that reveals sights that are truly out of this world. Named for the astronomer, Edwin Hubble, HST, was launched on April 24, 1990. Since then, it's had a number of adjustments to fix an error in the mirror and then again improve the image capture. 

You can see the marked improvement in image capture in the two photos below:

Here's the improvement in gif form:

The blurry the image taken with Hubble's Wide Field/Planetary Camera 1 in 1993 contrast with the one captured in 2009 by its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument, thanks to another service mission to upgrade the telescope again.

The Hubble's camera has the capability to detects not just the light we can see but also the infrared and ultraviolet light that cannot penetrate the earth's atmosphere. We now have a collection of truly amazing images taken over the past 29 years by the HST that you can admire on the Space Telescope site. You can also follow the HST  Twitter,  Instagram, and

 Facebook.

Among some of the most recent picture captures is this one, which was released only on May 16, 2019:

This galaxy that is millions of light years away has a very interesting story, as recounted on the Hubble Site:

The irregular galaxy NGC 4485 shows all the signs of having been involved in a hit-and-run accident with a bypassing galaxy. Rather than destroying the galaxy, the chance encounter is spawning a new generation of stars, and presumably planets.
The right side of the galaxy is ablaze with star formation, shown in the plethora of young blue stars and star-incubating pinkish nebulas. The left side, however, looks intact. It contains hints of the galaxy's previous spiral structure, which, at one time, was undergoing normal galactic evolution.
The larger culprit galaxy, NGC 4490, is off the bottom of the frame. The two galaxies sideswiped each other millions of years ago and are now 24,000 light-years apart. The gravitational tug-of-war between them created rippling patches of higher-density gas and dust within both galaxies. This activity triggered a flurry of star formation.
This galaxy is a nearby example of the kind of cosmic bumper-car activity that was more common billions of years ago when the universe was smaller and galaxies were closer together.

See it in this video:

Another recent capture highlights the improvements the HST has had in results when compared to the before version. You can see that in the paired photos below. they show the Eagle Nebula, also known as the "Pillars of Creation" located in Messier 16 (M16):

 The original photo, taken in 1995, revealed a three giant columns of gas, an image that was  so popular that you likely have seen on TV in a movie or even on a shirt or  pillow.

But after 25 years, astronomers decided they could improve on it. "It allows us to demonstrate how far Hubble has come in 25 years of observation," observed  Paul Scowen, of Arizona State University, as quoted in  Space.com  

Here's the video version showing how the pillars transformed from opaque to transparent, thanks to the vast improvement of image capture.