400 Years of the Telescope

My apologies for the absence of a blog in the last few days, but we were without a sufficient internet connection location while in Holland. As this is so, there is much to recall about the events of the last few days. On last Saturday morning, we departed bright and early from our hotel in Florence for the airport. We were sad to leave the historic and picturesque city, but we knew that we had more work to do on the other side of Europe. We arrived early afternoon in Amsterdam and collected all of our gear and the rental car and headed into the city. We needed to check into our hotel and make sure that our things were secure before we wandered into downtown Amsterdam to get dinner and to take in the local sites. Downtown Amsterdam is a mix of modern and historic with its social atmosphere geared towards a younger demographic with its bars and night clubs as well as its gothic architecture and city monuments that document the city’s history. We enjoyed the jaunt we took around the city while we searched for the most efficient routes to and from some of the landmarks of the city. We were planning on seeing the Rijks museum while we were walking around, but we arrived a few minutes too late and found ourselves only able to view its magnificent courtyard gardens. As the sun set, we realized how tired our bodies were due to the rigorous travel schedule and decided to turn in early to prepare for the long day ahead the next morning. Sunday morning brought us some prep-work for the reenactments scheduled for the next day. We went by the costume shop in downtown Amsterdam to pick up the actors’ 16th and 17th century period costumes. We then took our completely packed rental car to the city of Goes where we were to lodge for the next two nights. At the hotel, we met up with one of our production advisors, Albert VanHelden, who orchestrated much of the details for the reenactments on Monday. We dined with Dr. VanHelden as well as representatives of the Middelburg Astronomical Society. We were overjoyed to learn that they were planning a celebration of their own for the invention of the telescope. Their celebration, scheduled for fall 2008 will celebrate the introduction of the telescope to the masses by Lippershey. With short notice from us about our needs for a telescope replica for our reenactments, their team was able to recreate one of Huygens’ 13-foot telescopes for our filming purposes. The telescope was beautiful!

We continued our introduction to our new friends at a castle (names Baar Land) about 20 miles from Goes where we were scheduled to film our reenactments of Lipphershey, Huygens, Copernicus and Janssen. The castle belongs to a man whose family consists of a long line of bakers who have done well in the industry. As we filmed at the castle we learned that Hans Lippershey and fellow optics-maker, Janssen, were neighbors in Middelburg during the time when Lippershey presented his telescope to the masses, however it is argued that Janssen was the first telescope-maker and that Lippershey received the credit for the invention because nobody could believe that Janssen, a so-called scoundrel and criminal in his time, invented the telescope. The diversity of shots we could get on the grounds of the estate was fantastic for our needs. We were able to use the interior rooms as well as the gardens and the estate’s outdoor rooms for our filming purposes. If only the weather was as accommodating for us. We encountered some difficult conditions for filming in the mid-afternoon when dark clouds began rolling over the estate and rain began falling. We spent the next few hours gauging our filming based on the outdoor weather, trying our best to use times when it was raining to complete our interior shots. We successfully filmed four reenactments that day, concluding our series of scenes with our host standing in as Hans Lippershey. Though we left the estate around 5pm, our day was far from complete. We were headed into downtown Middelburg where we shot an interview with our advisor Albert VanHelden. We filmed the interview in the city’s center near the city hall that was remodeled after World War II after the original was destroyed during the war. Its current style and architecture matches the plans for the original building that was destroyed.

Please stay tuned for the next update from the road. Next we will explore the treasures of the Observatory of Paris and the beauty of the Telescopes on the Island of La Palma.