Merz Telescopes

Ileana Chinnici is a research astronomer at INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo in Italy. She has been an Officer of the Italian Astronomical Society, National Coordinator of the INAF Museums, and Chair of the International Astronomical Union Commission C41 “Archives” Working Group. She has also served as a member of the Italian Astronomical Society (SAIt) Council and in 2008 was appointed Adjoint Scholar at Vatican Observatory. Her research has focused on the history of nineteenth century astronomy and astrophysics, the history of scientific instruments, and historical astronomical archives. She is the author or editor of several books as well as 25 journal papers and book chapters.

• Introduction: the role of Merz telescopes in Italian astronomy - by Ileana Chinnici.- The Merz Company:  a Global Player of the 19th Century - by Jurgen Kost & Gudrun Wolfschmidt.- 1850-1900: The Era of Very Large Refractors - by Paolo Brenni.- The maker and the scientist: the relationship between Georg Merz and the Jesuit astronomer Angelo Secchi - by Ileana Chinnici.- Visual double stars  measurements with Merz refractors:  some statistics - by Giuseppe Massone.- Padua Astronomical Observatory and Merz Workshop: a special connection - by Valeria Zanini.- Merz instruments at Naples Observatory -by Mauro Gargano.- Merz Telescopes at Brera - by Mario Carpino.- Merz telescopes at Rome  Astronomical Observatories - by Aldo Altamore & Francesco Poppi.- Merz Telescopes at Catania Royal Astrophysical Observatory - by Andrea Orlando.- Appendix – A list of surviving Merz telescopes outside Italy - by P. Brenni and Ileana Chinnici.

“This volume will be of a valuable resource to all those interested in nineteenth-century telescopes. The editor and contributors also deserve credit for putting forward this effort to better understand, contextualize and preserve the instruments produced by the Merz enterprise, an effort that will hopefully be continued.” (Pedro M.P. Raposo, Journal for the History of Astronomy, Vol. 49 (02), May, 2018)“This is a multi-author work, edited by Ileana Chinnici, and all the chapters are well written and highly informative. There are plenty of illustrations, in both colour and black & white, most of which I had not seen before.” (Richard McKim, The Observatory, Vol. 137 (1260), October, 2017)