Watching Stars Disappear

 The skies above are filled with constant motion. Besides the clouds and the sun crossing slowly across the sky during our days, we also have the motion of the moon. Further out, the planets move around in our night and morning skies and change their positions to each other. Even further out, though much less noticeable, the stars slowly change their nightly position (due to the earth’s orbit) and their positions as compared to each other, visible only through telescopes and by comparing their positions to older pictures.

    In our own solar system, with even a small telescope we can see the moons of planets moving over the course of a night. We can also see the motion of our own moon by watching it pass in front of the stars behind it. Using telescopes and even binoculars we can watch as stars are covered by the moon. This is called an occultation, when one object moves in front of another, blocking it from view. I find it fascinating to watch this happen! 

    The solar eclipse we saw in April was actually an occultation; the moon slowly covered the sun from our view!

    A friend in my astronomy club recently sent out an e-mail, reminding us that there was going to be an occultation of the bright star Spica on Saturday night. (7/13/24)

    Since the club had two star parties scheduled for that weekend, I felt as if the event couldn’t help but be clouded out, that is how so many of our star parties usually end up. It is a Pittsburgh thing and also an astronomy thing.

    The jokes about rain and clouds and the recent purchases of telescopes and astronomical events are both old and completely uncountable.  I can’t recall how many times I’ve heard people apologizing for buying new equipment and for the resulting clouds they brought with it. I didn’t want to get my hopes up…

( For another blog about astronomy, occultations and clouds, click below)

Notes from a Reading Addict: Waiting for the Clouds to Part (bookman56.blogspot.com)

    I started making my list. I don’t want to forget anything important, the last thing I want to do is set everything up and find out I’ve forgotten one of the most important things required! This is what was on the list; my camera (charged!) and its assorted gear, the telescope, its tripod, counterweights, binoculars, a notebook and pen, flashlights (red and white), an accurate timepiece and of course, the obligatory cup of coffee. I knew where I was going to go, I had called the owners and left a message with their answering service saying when and where I’d be.

    I set up the telescope in the front yard as a test run. I pre-set the camera and checked my field of view. The entire diameter of the moon would be able to be captured. It took about 10 minutes to set everything up. I had put a 1.25” adapter on the camera and mounted it where the diagonal goes.

    The time for the occultation was approximately 11:20PM, so I made sure the car was packed by 9. Then I sat inside and did some reading, caught up on a few e-mails and also kept an eye on the sky. Around 10:15, I left the house and hit the road.

    My observing spot was in a cemetery situated above the town of Sharpsburg. The area itself is dark and hardly ever visited and it is high enough that I would have no problems with seeing Spica and the moon through trees, buildings or power lines. The roads around it were empty, there were no cars going by. I pulled in and started setting up. I was early and as far as occultation watching goes, that is always good thing. The telescope has time to acclimate and there is time to do some test shots and make sure that the focus is proper and locked. The camera is using the telescope as its lens so it has no automatic focus like the camera lens have. It all depended on my aged eyes to get as crisp a shot as possible.

    After taking 5 or 6 shots and making slight adjustments after each one, I tightened the focuser and then stood and watched through binoculars as the bright star neared the moons darkened side. Looking through binoculars I could see Spica but I couldn’t see the nearing edge of the moon; it blended in with the dark sky behind it. I couldn’t see the edge using the preview screen on the camera either. I could only guess how close the star was. I was watching the time carefully but the occultation might happen earlier than predicted.

    Spica is the 15^th brightest star in our night sky. It is located in the constellation Virgo and it lies about 260 light years away from us. Even though it is bright, I still needed binoculars to see it near the blindingly bright moon.

    The timer on the shutter was set for 10 seconds to help eliminate vibrations. I also had placed a small bean bag on the camera to help steady it. As the time neared, I decreased the time between shots. I looked at one shot and the star was clearly visible and then the next shot showed that the star had disappeared! 

To see Spica, you may have to enlarge the picture.

    The last shot with Spica visible was taken at 11:20:53PM, the next shot, after it had disappeared was taken at 11:21:11PM, 18 seconds later. The camera's time stamp was accurate to within a second.

    One thing I think I’ll change for the next occultation is that I’ll watch it through the telescope instead of trying to photograph it. I find that it is much more interesting watching the star disappear in real time. Seeing the star, planet or moon disappear is always exciting to me.

    Everything worked out as planned. I saw one of the wonders that our world presents us. I saw something happen in the sky that very few of the world’s population even knew was happening.

    There are so many treasures hidden right in front of our eyes and all we have to do is look for them! They aren’t all astronomical; waterfalls, flowers, the hills and valleys of our planet, sunrises, sunsets and rainbows. There are also the sounds and smells of our world.  Wind rushing across the fields, through wind chimes and the soothing sounds of water rushing over the rocks. The smells of flowers, freshly baked bread and the rain having just fallen on a hot summer day.  We are so lucky to have these opportunities presented to us. They are out there and they have the power to move us, both emotionally and intellectually. Take advantage of them, they are there for us to experience!

    I was back at home a little after midnight, happy and ready to jump into bed. I had spent a quiet hour under a beautiful night sky. I had watched movement in space; I had watched a star disappear. What a wonderful way to spend an evening!

Altoona and Back

 A friend, Byron Smail recently released a new book that he wrote (Blair County Iron) and was going to give a talk about it. Ann Marie and I were going to go and also spend a little time roaming around the area. His talk was taking place at the Altoona Railroaders Memorial Museum, being a railroad fanatic; I wasn’t going to miss that! We had been to another of Byron’s talks when he had printed his first book and we enjoyed his talk immensely. We were looking forward to both the talk and the trip!

    As is always the case, when we are going somewhere, I look for a few things to do on our trip, a couple little things which might make the ride a bit more enjoyable.

    Of course, there were a couple geocaches on our route. Since we were going to hear a talk about iron furnaces, I also added 3 furnaces that we hadn’t visited yet to our itinerary. We also would stop at a couple quilt shops and a new to us, restaurant. Then, there were the sites we would just run across, we never know what we will find!

    Our start was a little after sunrise, hoping to avoid some of the heat of the day. We ended up in Gallitzin around 9. There was a cache that we hadn’t found a few weeks ago and we were going to try to find it again. Unfortunately, after 15-20 minutes of searching around, we couldn’t locate it. We weren’t too concerned, it is only a game, chances are, we will be back.

    About a mile or two away, just below the railroad tracks coming out of Altoona, there used to be a furnace. The town of Bennington sat here, now all that remains are a couple foundations and a cemetery. My hopes were to find the stack from the furnace. I had only a rough idea of its location; it was below the tracks and above a large slag pile. A couple friends had been there but we hadn’t…yet.

    We drove along a dirt road, searching for where a path/road might have once been, leading down to the site.  We passed a long line of coke ovens; we counted over 40 of them. Hundreds used to be here. The fronts are all broken. I’ve heard that the owners would take the doors and fronts off of them after they were no longer used to avoid taxation.

    We got out of the car and walked back and forth searching for a possible route down to the furnace. At one spot, the slope was extremely steep and almost all of the edges were covered in thick, high Bind weed. Driving back I found what I believed was the trail, I stopped the car and went down over the hill. Fighting through high weeds and jagger bushes I went down a couple hundred yards. AMB stayed in the car and not wanting to continue on by myself and possibly get hurt, I returned to the car. I marked the spot with my GPS, I WILL be back to explore further!

We meandered around the Hollidaysburg area, checking out a couple quilt shops, a roadside veggie stand and then stopped for lunch at a Pennsylvania Dutch style restaurant. A little further down the road we came into the town of Woodbury. The Elizabeth Iron Furnace used to sit here. Peter Shoenberger had a furnace built here in 1827. It operated through 1843 and then it was dismantled and moved. We looked at the field where it once stood but didn’t bother going over to explore. There are no ruins there.

The furnace was moved to Bloomfield Township where it became the Bloomfield Furnace. After operating for a few years, it was once again dismantled and moved to Rodman where it became the Middle Martha Furnace.

    I stopped in a small business and asked if they knew anything about the furnace. Bryan, the owner didn’t know anything about it but he did give me some directions to a near-by limestone kiln. We drove over and stopped to take some pictures.

    Limestone kilns were used to burn limestone to produce lime which was spread on fields to help improve crop yields. They were operated much the same as iron furnaces. Limestone and charcoal, or a similar heat source was loaded from the top and the finished product sunk to the bottom where it was taken out. These kilns can be found all over the state.

    After looking around the kiln and photographing it, we drove to the outskirts of Bellwood, a bit north of Altoona. There we searched for a set of ruins, another Elizabeth Furnace. The first one we looked for was in Bedford County, this one was in Blair. Once again, I only had an idea of where they might be located. I tried coming in from one side of Sandy Run Creek but saw nothing, the land was too flat. The furnace had to be on the opposite side of the stream, up against the hillside.

    We drove across a near-by bridge and tried again. Ann Marie decided to hang out in the car while I searched. My “search” took me through thick weeds and across hundreds of fallen trees. I walked through mud bogs and had mosquitoes feeding off me. I tried my best to avoid the poison ivy. I had shorts on, not the best clothing for bushwhacking and my legs were bleeding from scratches. I followed the stream and didn’t see anything and eventually backtracked. I found a small deer trail and followed it in closer to the hillside and then... all of a sudden, it appeared in front of me. Like a vision it became apparent to me, I could discern between the trees and leaves and the rock ruins behind them.

    The furnace had partially collapsed though one corner was still standing sharp and straight. I didn’t see any openings; they had been covered when the sides collapsed. Older pictures show that there were 3 openings. I climbed up the hillside to the top where I could see the chimney. Looking in, I could see the bricks which lined it and some trash that other “explorers” had tossed inside. Parts of a wall connected the top to the hillside. Numerous animal holes were visible between the stones. After taking a few more pictures, I took the easy way out by sneaking through the yard of a house above it and returned to the car and Ann Marie. She told me that 2 people had stopped to inquire if she needed any help. Nice people in this area!

    We then returned to Hollidaysburg where we checked into a “low priced” motel. We showered and got dressed for the lecture.

    Held in a lecture room in the Railroaders Memorial Museum, Byron kept us enthralled for about an hour and a half. He told about the various iron furnaces situated around Blair County and showed us pictures, both old and present day. He explained some things about how the iron ore was mined and also about some of the limestone quarries in the county. A little bit about the Portage Railroad and the canals was presented also. A little over 50 people were in attendance.

    Leaving the building after the talk we were presented with a wide rainbow that stretched across the sky. The sun was just setting and that added even more color to the view. Driving back to Hollidaysburg, we watched the sky turn orange. The mountains above Altoona showed all the various hills and valleys, all dark, underneath a spectacular reddish orange sky. There was no place to pull over and take a picture, but there is no doubt, it will always be in our memories.

    The next morning, I was up at dawn and went out to find a couple geocaches before I returned with coffee. We returned to Altoona for breakfast at a great diner called Tom and Joes. Opened originally in 1933 it reflects the way diners used to be. The tables and chairs are vintage styled, a counter is available and the food was both flavorful and plenty. Best breakfast I’ve had in a long time!

    We walked down to the RR tracks and watched the east-bound Amtrak train pull into the station. We found another geocache and then headed up towards the Horseshoe Curve. We did another cache there and then went under the tracks, past the coke ovens located in the ghost town of Glen White and then to Gallitzin where we attempted again to find the cache we couldn’t find the day before. NO LUCK! I’d like to think it is gone, how could we have missed it, THREE TIMES?

    We did one more cache in the town and then got onto rt.22 and headed west towards home. We had only been here for two days but we kept saying that it felt as if we’d been on the road for a week. We managed to squeeze a lot into this short little trip; I’d have to say it was another complete success!

Stepping Back in History

Back in the 17^th and 18^th centuries one of our ancestors' needs was for good quality tools and to get these, they needed metal. The Pennsylvania hillsides have numerous fields of iron ore and to turn this ore into metal they built furnaces. By putting the ore into a furnace along with a couple other necessary ingredients, they were able to produce iron.

    To remove the iron from the ore, it has to be heated extremely hot and then to separate the molten iron from the un-needed impurities a flux was needed. Limestone (and sometimes oyster shells) provided that element. For the heat the first furnaces were fueled by charcoal, made from the trees which grew around the furnace. Later, coal was used and then coke.

    Furnaces were most often built where these main ingredients were located, saving the owners transportation costs. The charcoal was made by chopping down trees and stacking the logs in piles. The colliers, the men who made the charcoal would light these mounds and let them smolder. Their job, a rather dangerous one, was to make sure that the piles didn’t catch on fire. Woodcutters played a very important part of this process since it could take 300-350 acres of timber to keep a furnace in blast for a year! Once the charcoal had cooled it was put in a dry spot until it was needed, usually very close to the furnace. Iron ore and limestone were also brought to the site and kept close at hand.

Aprox. Site of the Colebrookdale Furnace

    The first iron furnace in Pennsylvania was the Colebrookdale Furnace on the outskirts of Boyertown, built in 1720. The first furnace west of the Alleghenies was the Alliance Furnace built in 1790, on Jacobs Creek, not far from Perryopolis. A furnace was built in Pittsburgh around 1792 but it lasted only a couple years before the ore ran out. The Shadyside Furnace was built where Shadyside is today, no evidence of it remains.

Hillview Furnace

Wilroy Furnace

                                                                    Cordorus Furnace

    The early furnaces were built from field stone while later furnaces tended to have been built out of quarried and cut stone. The shapes were usually the same, square based, pyramidal shaped stacks of stone. There are some that were built in a round shape but these are rather rare. Some furnaces were built with tiers or ledges and the types of arches varied from furnace to furnace, some coming to a sharp point, some rounded and others squared off. I feel as if a lot of the design depended on what was available, the builders and owner’s egos, and how deep their pocket-books were!

    Inside the furnace was the chimney, insulated from the outside by dirt and stones. Below that it widened out into the bosh where the molten ingredients combined. Below this was the crucible where the molten iron collected. There were arches on the sides, sometimes only one but usually two. Some furnaces had more. The one in the front was where the molten iron was allowed to flow out of into the molds on the casting room floor. Many furnaces also had a tuyere arch where air was blown into the furnace to increase the heat, producing better quality and more economic iron. Another arch may have been used to remove the slag from on top of the iron before it was tapped. 

    Slag was a byproduct of the iron making process that formed on top of the molten iron and had to be removed before the iron could be tapped. It hardened into a glassy mass that was easily broken and can be found near most of the old furnaces. The various colors of it are from the various chemicals and minerals used in the ingredients. 

Waterwheel and pumps (above) at the Hopewell Furnace

    Air was introduced to the furnace by bellows which were operated by water wheels, powered by the near-by streams. This increased the heat of the furnace. In later years, some of these water wheels were replaced by steam engines. Like today, when a more efficient method was available, the company latched onto it. Progress always moves on!

    When the stone blocking the crucible was removed, the molten iron would flow into the casting house, a sand floored room with molds tamped into the floor. A main line ran down from the furnace with branches coming off of it. The iron in the depressions was called pig iron because they resembled a sow feeding its piglets. 

 Conemaugh Furnace and workers 1894

    The land around a furnace was filled with various buildings to house equipment, workers and their shops. 

    The furnaces ran day and night, new ingredients were added after the furnace were tapped. It was a noisy, smoky place to live and work!

Workers houses at the Etna Furnace

Ironmasters house at the Etna Furnace

Brady’s Bend Works 1873

    There were buildings for the charcoal, the iron and limestone, blacksmith and carpenter shops, stables for the horses and oxen used to transport raw materials and finished products, along with houses for the workers and their families. The workers houses were often log cabins, while the Ironmasters had much nicer residences.  If it was a larger operation, schools and stores were near-by. The longer a furnace was in operation, the bigger its footprint would be.

    Once the natural resources ran out or their prices increased beyond the owner’s means, the furnace went out of blast. Often it was because the lumber had run out. There are some furnaces that shut down because of poor quality ingredients. Some complexes continued producing iron for decades and a few, over 100 years!

    The furnaces that went out of blast usually just sat there. Over time, the buildings were torn down or rotted away, the community that sat around the furnace often moved over to another furnace, the workers were needed there and commuting wasn’t a real option in those days. Some of the building which were better made might have survived but most just disappeared. The furnaces themselves, being made out of heavy stone tended to survive longer. 

Baldwin Furnace

    Trees and weeds start growing in between the stonework and as the years pass by, their roots increase in size, pushing the stonework apart and causing the structures to collapse. The weather: rain, snow and ice further erode the structures. 

Biddle (Rock) Furnace

As decades turn into centuries, they collapse in on themselves and slowly disappear as nature grows up around them and hide them from view. Some furnaces were taken down and the stonework was used to build foundations for new buildings while some townships used them for walls and bridges.

Hopewell Furnace

    Some of the furnaces were taken care of and some of the nicer ones were preserved. The growths on them were pruned off and historic societies, owners and sometimes state and federal governments made displays out of them. This requires time and money and some owners just can’t afford either and so the structures are left to the ravages of time.

    This past week we took a trip to visit a couple furnaces we hadn’t seen yet. One, the Paradise Furnace was located near Raystown Lake in the Trough Creek State Park. 

    The furnace is near a small stream, built into a hillside. Stone pillars stand behind it on the hillside which held up a bridge which was used to carry ingredients to the top of the furnace for fueling. Time and gravity has pulled a lot of the furnace down. The right hand side is still standing but much of it is collapsing, exposing iron bars which helped hold it together. There are some signs near-by describing how furnaces worked but there was very little information about the furnace itself.

    It was originally built around 1830 and was named the Trough Creek Furnace, in 1832 it was renamed the Mary Ann Furnace. It became the Paradise Furnace in 1843. It remained in blast until around 1860. The demand for iron during the Civil War had it re-fired in 1865, working until 1869.

    About an hour away we came to the Franklin Furnace, a short distance away from Fort Laudon. This furnace was built in 1828, a couple years before the Paradise Furnace.  It produced iron until 1882.

    The walls of a period barn are sitting near-by as are the manager’s house/office and a couple houses where the workers lived.  There are no signs indicating that we were in a historic district (as of 1991) or what the furnace was named or where any of the historic houses were. The furnace was overgrown and had lawn clippings and trash piled in front of it. The structure is still impressive but sadly, we could have driven past it if we hadn’t been looking for it. It sits about 40 feet from the road, looking abandoned and forgotten. I wonder if the people in the neighborhood even realize or care that they live in a site that was part of our state’s history.

These remnants of the iron industry are part of its beginning. They are part of the history of the steel industry and they are part of our country’s history. They helped make us as a country become who we are now! If you ever get a chance, visit one and see how far we’ve come!

Further Reading;

          *Blair County Iron by Byron Smail  (2024)

          *Cornwall Iron Furnace, Pennsylvania Trail of History Guide by Susan Dieffenbach (2003)

          *A Guide to the Old Stone Blast Furnaces in Western Pennsylvania by Myron B. Sharp & William H. Thomas (1966)

          *Hopewell Furnace by National Park Service

          *The Iron Furnaces of the Cove by Byron Smail  (2023)

          *The Iron Industry in Pennsylvania  by Gerald G. Eggert  (1994)

          *Making Iron and Steel, The Historic Process 1700-1900 by Jack Chard (1995)

          *Pennsylvania Iron Manufacture in the Eighteenth Century by Arthur Cecil Bining (1938)

          * Study of Alternatives- Mount Etna Iron Furnace Complex by SW PA. Heritage Preservation Commission (1990)