Odyssey Astronomy Club members are being given a behind-the-scenes tour of the Galileo collection and other astronomy artificacts at the History of Sciences Collections of the University of Oklahoma. Currator Dr. Kerry Magruder is giving the tour, starting at 3:00 PM Saturday, Nov. 23. The tour will last 60 to 90 minutes.

The History of Science Collections is preparing for a major exhibition focused on Galileo, “The Galileo’s World Exhibition,” opening August 1, 2014. The History of Science Collections of the University of Oklahoma Libraries currently holds nearly 100,000 volumes, according to its webpage http://ouhos.org/about/,“representing every field and subject area of science, technology and medicine, include complete sets of first editions of major scientists such as Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Darwin. Volumes range chronologically from Hrabanus Maurus, Opus de universo (1467), to current publications in the history of science. . . . The Galileo collection includes all 12 first editions of Galileo, four of which contain his own handwriting. It also includes the first English translation of Galileo, and many other first and later editions of the works of Galileo and his immediate contemporaries in the Accademia dei Lincei.”

Dr. Magruder is the John H. and Drus B. Cable Chair of the History of Sciences Collections. An astronomy enthusiast and former director of the Oklahoma Baptisty Univeristy Planetarium, Dr. Magruder gave a lecture on Galileo at this year’s Oki-Tex Star Party. 

For the tour, we’ll meet at 3:00 PM, Saturday, November 23 in the History of Sciences Collections, located in the Bizell Memorial Library, 401 West Brooks Street, Rm. 521NW, Norman. Directions are online at http://ouhos.org/contact-us/ and http://libraries.ou.edu/locations/?id=20&view=dir. After the tour, we’ll have an observing session at the Ten-Acre Observatory.