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  • Observações do Recife holandês
  • Historia Naturalis Brasiliae
  • Observatório no Telhado
  • Modelo tridimensional da exposição
  • Mapa do sertão brasileiro
Observações do Recife holandês1 Historia Naturalis Brasiliae2 Observatório no Telhado3 Modelo tridimensional da exposição4 Mapa do sertão brasileiro5
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"OBSERVATIONS OF DUTCH RECIFE"


The Museum of Astronomy and Related Sciences (MAST) will open on Wednesday, 17 September, the temporary exhibition Observations of Dutch Recife, which reconstitutes part of the work of Jorge Marcgrave, a young scholar who lived in the Americas from 1638 to 1644. In Recife, he made observations about climate, land, plants, animals, people, and the sky of the Southern Hemisphere, until then little known among European astronomers.

At 3pm, a roundtable will be held about the exhibition and the launching of the catalogue Observations of Dutch Recife, with the participation of Heloisa Meireles Gesteira (MAST/MCTI), Oscar Toshiaki Matsuura (IAG/USP and MAST/MCTI), Fabíola Belinger Angotti (MAST/MCTI), Antonio Carlos Martins (MAST/MCTI), and Eugenio Reis (MAST/MCTI). The debate will be held in the Auditorium of the annex building of MAST. Entrance is free.

At 5.30 pm the Observations of Dutch Recife exhibition will be officially opened, with the presentation of the ON/MAST Choir, conducted by Maestro Marcio Carvalho. Following this a Sky Observation Workshop will be held with the Quadrant and all presented will be invited to participate in the Sky Observation Program, using portable optical telescopes and the centenarian 21cm Equatorial Refracting Telescope.

This exhibition represented a challenge: the production of an astronomical quadrant drawing on Marcgrave's descriptions of the instrument he used to observe the sky. Based on academic work carried out by the curator Heloisa Meireles Gesteira and by the Marcgrave specialist, Oscar Toshiaki Matsuura, the exhibition presents the result of work carried out in MAST's different areas: history of science, museology, and science education and dissemination.

Centuries ago, the quadrant was the instrument used to observe the height of the stars, serving to obtain the time and to frame daily life. During the first half of the seventeenth century, the five-foot quadrant (around 1.6m) was the most important instrument. Nowadays, due to its simplicity, it can also be used as a didactic instrument, since it is easy to perceive how it works.

The exhibition therefore explores new methods of interaction with the public, based on the use of the astronomic quadrant as a means of comprehending scientific concepts. Its panels are very simply visually, with short texts and minimal captions. The catalogue dialogues a lot with the exhibition, and includes some more analytic texts with a little more reflection.

"The exhibition is transformed into a 'journey' in time, since it can present us with the challenges and limits of an observation, done with an artifact which seeks, as far as possible, to reproduce the characteristics of a scientific instrument from the past." Observation with the quadrant leads the visitor directly to the sky and to understand the functioning of an instrument at a time when astronomical data reaches scholars through computers.

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