Browsing through the Observing Books of Carloforte

Extract

The history of the Carloforte ILS Station is also the history of all the people who have spent part of their life working there. Table 1 shows the names of these people from the beginning of the service till its end.

Running our eyes through the pages of the Carloforte ILS Station Observing books, we can read, beyond the cold figures that refer to the star transits, a lot of notes and comments that allow us to understand the high degree of humanity, scientific reliability and self-abnegation of the observers. Many of them, after their experience at Carloforte, had continued their activity as researchers in other fields of the Astronomy; just as an example, we may cite Bianchi, Volta, Martin, Righini, that respectively became Directors of the Astronomical Observatories of Brera, Turin, Trieste, Arcetri. We also may cite Camera, Cecchini, Nicolini, that played important roles in the Central Bureau of ILS when this one was awarded to Italy. A few on the list were just temporary observers, and their history outside of the Observatory remains unknown for us.