Finding Signposts in the Sky

They have trudged through farms and along fjords to find the places where Vincent van Gogh painted “Moonrise” and Edvard Munch came across the ghastly inspiration for “The Scream.”

Explaining a key moment in the Civil War, they determined that Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson was shot by his own troops because he was silhouetted by a full moon, making him unrecognizable as he approached jittery soldiers. They pinpointed the very moment -- 4:14 p.m. on Dec. 28, 1960 -- that Ansel Adams took a treasured photo of the moon rising over Half Dome in Yosemite Valley.

For nearly 20 years, three Texas researchers have set out to uncover details of history, art and literature using new scientific techniques -- and finding most of their answers in the stars. Using phases of the moon, patterns of stars and other celestial phenomena, the researchers are at the fore of a developing field called forensic astronomy.

The work of physicists Donald W. Olson and Russell L. Doescher, and English professor Marilynn S. Olson -- the Olsons are married -- has helped put unheralded Texas State University at San Marcos on the academic map. It has also regularly captivated one subculture after another, including history buffs and art lovers.

“These are fascinating little puzzles,” said Anthony F. Aveni, a professor at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., who is a leading scholar in Mesoamerican astronomy. “They are part of the larger picture of science’s foray into new areas.”

But some of the researchers’ peers, including Aveni, say their latest project -- a clarification of an ancient battle that gave rise to the marathon race -- goes too far in trying to use science to explain what many think is a myth.

In an article in the September issue of the magazine Sky & Telescope, timed to coincide with the Olympic Games, the researchers seek to prove details of a storied event: the death of the messenger Pheidippides after running the first “marathon” to Athens in 490 B.C. Trouble is, many think that’s all it is -- a story.

“This next step is kind of an escalation. What you have is an attempt to conflate myth and reality,” said Aveni, who is contributing a chapter about the Texas researchers to a book exploring the connections between science and anthropology.

“This comes out of science’s bottom-line nature, the idea that science decodes everything, that there is a literal truth to everything, that there is only one truth, with a capital ‘T,’ ” Aveni said. “It’s like a fundamentalist reading a Bible. It leaves no room for imagination.”

*

On a foggy afternoon in 1994, a curious site befell the Yosemite Valley. Clusters of amateur photographers stood in a foot of snow, gazing toward Half Dome, Yosemite’s magnificent landmark. No one was taking a picture -- not yet, anyway.

The Texas team had completed a study of Ansel Adams’ photograph “Moon and Half Dome.” By calculating Half Dome’s height, the moon’s position in the photograph and the place where Adams had to have been standing, and by measuring the shadows pictured on Half Dome’s granite face to pinpoint the position of the sun, the researchers determined to within a minute the moment Adams clicked the shutter.

They concluded that the precise conditions would occur again at 4:05 p.m. on Dec. 13, 1994 -- and not again until 2017. With a few students, the researchers walked into Ahwahnee Meadow, where Adams stood 34 years earlier. They knew their study had been of interest to a handful of astronomy buffs, but they were gratified to see more than 40 photographers there.

“Boy,” Donald Olson recalled whispering to Doescher, “we’d better be right.”

They were. Shortly before 4 p.m., the sun began to burn away the fog, revealing a waxing gibbous moon, 86% illuminated -- just like the one that Adams photographed. The Texas trio watched with pride as the photographers snapped away.

“That was fun,” Olson said.

Olson said there was no particular pattern to their research, just a curiosity about unanswered questions in literature, art and history. The researchers decided to study the Half Dome photograph after reading about the 50th anniversary of another Adams piece, perhaps his most famous work, “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.”

“How long have people been looking at the sky? Forever,” Olson said. “So how long have writers been writing about the sky? How long have artists been depicting the sky? How long has astronomy influenced military history? We just keep our eyes open. One thing just leads to another.”

In the 1990s, the team began a line of investigation that has come to embody their work more than any other: deciphering Van Gogh’s paintings of the sky. Using computer programs that allow them to recreate celestial conditions in any quadrant of the sky at any moment in history, as well as maps, letters Van Gogh sent to his brother, and complex mathematics, last year they found the spot where Van Gogh painted “Moonrise” in 1889 -- at the Saint-Paul monastery in Saint-Remy, France.

The work drew them to other artwork featuring enigmatic depictions of the sky. Last year, they used similar tactics to find the spot near Oslo where Munch painted his disquieting masterpiece, “The Scream,” in the late 1800s. More significant for art historians, they also think they solved an enduring mystery about the piece: why the sky in the background was blood-red.

After an exhaustive search that included reading Munch’s preserved notes and sifting through dusty records at the Oslo City Museum, they wrote an article this year contending that the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa turned the sky red.

Munch, they realized, would have been looking southwest as he painted -- toward the portion of the sky that was lighted up each night with startling sunsets caused by the 1883 eruption.

The Indonesian volcanic eruption was a devastating event, destroying about 165 villages and killing more than 36,000 people. Ash thrown into the sky produced colorful sunsets across the Earth -- “clouds like blood and tongues of fire,” as Munch himself described them.

“It was right there, in his own words,” Olson said. “Isn’t that nice?”

*

Donald Olson, 57, is the guiding hand of the Texas research. He flits about his office, which might be spacious were it not jammed floor-to-ceiling with books, maps, tide charts and paintings.

Relics of the group’s detective hunts are everywhere. On one shelf, for instance, is a vintage postcard of the Navy cruiser Indianapolis, which was sunk by Japanese torpedoes in the waning days of World War II. It is a reminder of their 2002 study showing that the Indianapolis became vulnerable because it was back-lighted by a surprisingly bright moon, making it visible to a Japanese submarine at an unusually long distance of more than 10 miles.

“There’s a story behind every bit of this stuff,” Olson said.

An Ohio native, Olson earned his doctorate at UC Berkeley, studying relativity. In 1981 he began teaching at Texas State University, which is about 35 miles southwest of Austin and was then known as Southwest Texas State.

In the early years, he was like any other obscure physics professor, fitting in nicely with colleagues who delved into such subjects as magnetoresistance and ion beam sputter fabrication.

Then, in 1987, a friend in the English department mentioned that Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” contained surprisingly sophisticated astronomical references, including a mention of planetary charts called Toledan Tables. The colleague wondered what the references meant -- or if it was just gibberish.

Olson pored over the book and was drawn to Franklin’s Tale, a story of misguided love and devotion and, ultimately, forgiveness. In the tale, an unusually high tide swamps the coast of Brittany. The tide was so high, Chaucer wrote in the 14th century, “it seemed that all the rocks were away.”

The researchers pieced together a computer program that allowed them to recreate the patterns of stars, planets and the moon. They discovered that in December 1340, western France slogged through a once-in-a-millennium celestial phenomenon that produced an exceptionally high tide. This was caused by an unusual alignment of conditions -- among them, an eclipse and the moon being at its closest point to the Earth.

Chaucer, they thought, was referring to this phenomenon.

In the campus cafeteria, an excited Olson related the finding to his friend. An eavesdropping history professor suggested that the group next investigate one of the worst disasters to befall the U.S. military -- a botched landing at the Tarawa atoll, in the Pacific, during World War II.

“If you can figure out the phase of the moon in the 1300s, do you think you can figure it out during World War II? Well, of course you can,” Olson said.

Japanese troops controlled Tarawa in fall 1943. The Marines’ assault had been painstakingly planned, but when they arrived, the tides they had counted on did not materialize. Boats were stranded atop a coral reef about 600 yards from shore. Marines were forced to wade to the beach under heavy fire, and though they won a crucial victory, more than 1,000 died.

Olson discovered that the moon was at its farthest point from Earth that day, at the same time it was in a quarter phase. That rare combination meant that the moon had an unusually weak draw on the tides surrounding the atoll.

“It was nobody’s fault,” he said. “I’m doing calculations that were not available at the time.”

*

This year, the researchers turned to the battle of Marathon, an event that had long been caught in the nexus of mythology and history -- dogged by antiquated accounts, inflated by poets bent on giving old heroes a fresh glow every century or two.

In 490 B.C., Persian troops invaded Greece near the city of Marathon. The Greeks fended them off and the Persians headed south. Pheidippides, legend has it, was dispatched to Athens. When he arrived, he reported the Greeks’ victory, and according to some versions, he warned of another possible invasion, then collapsed and died.

The tale gave rise to the modern marathon; in the 1896 Olympics, a 25-mile race ending in Athens was staged to honor Pheidippides. The distance has since been stretched to 26.2 miles. This year, the women’s marathon will be held Sunday and the men’s Aug. 29. The course will be roughly the same one that Pheidippides would have taken.

The researchers contend that the accepted date of the battle, Sept. 12, is wrong, because it fails to account for different calendars used in ancient Greece. They believe the actual date was Aug. 12. If so, the temperature during the messenger’s run could have been as high as 102 degrees. Even a trained runner could suffer heatstroke at those temperatures -- and if so, Olson says, perhaps the story is more fact than fable.

“Our astronomical calculation ... suggests an explanation for the death of the runner and makes the story of the first marathon run more plausible,” the researchers wrote in Sky & Telescope.

Olson knows the article has fueled criticism that dogs the trio from time to time. Some have called it pop science. Others, including European art curators, have said that their work can perform a disservice by sapping art, literature and mythology of mystery and mysticism.

In this case, some scholars say the trio is confusing history with legend. Contradictory accounts of the battle and the run were not written until hundreds of years after the marathon, causing some scholars to question whether the run ever took place. Even if the marathon did take place, there’s debate over whether Pheidippides was the runner. The fact that one of the researchers’ sources for the study is the Greek historian Herodotus -- who has been accused of exaggerating and fabricating for 2,000 years -- doesn’t help.

“Even if you accept the sources, it is still unclear who made the run,” said John Lazenby, a historian at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in England who dismisses the story.

Olson acknowledges that the validity of the original accounts of the battle -- and the run -- remain in dispute. He concedes that, although many of the group’s studies produce conclusions, this one has produced what can best be described as a theory. But he says it is wrong to dismiss the legend as untrue.

Ed Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory, has been studying ancient astronomy for 30 years and follows the researchers’ work. He doesn’t agree with criticism that it does art an injustice. The link between “The Scream” and the Krakatoa eruption, he said, has little to do with the painting itself and is “simply part of the story about how the painting came together.”

“The questions themselves are perfectly fair,” Krupp said. “It’s not that there are places where mankind should just not go to investigate. It’s just: Did they get it right? Or did they get it wrong?”

Olson is a devotee of history, art and literature, and he doesn’t see the harm in trying to round out the world’s understanding of those fields.

“Some people think we’re taking the fun out of it,” he said. “We say the opposite. We’re adding interest, not taking it away. We’re making it fun. In that one moment, when these things become clear ... it’s just electric.”