Keeping on theme here with Frankenstein, astronomers set out to investigate if indeed Mary Shelley told the truth about how she conceived the idea for her famous novel of the same name.
From Space.com:
" In June 1816, Shelley attended a gathering at Villa Diodati, which overlooks Switzerland's Lake Geneva. Shelley, who was 18 at the time, was accompanied by her future husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, Lord Byron and John Polidori.On one dark and stormy night, after the group read a volume of ghost stories, Byron challenged each member of the party to write their own chilling story."The chronology that's in most books says Byron suggested they come up with ghost stories on June 16, and by June 17 she's writing a scary story," Olson said in a statement. "But Shelley has a very definite memory of several days passing where she couldn't come up with an idea. If this chronology is correct, then she embellished and maybe fabricated her account of how it all happened."A separate version of the events states that Byron made his suggestion on June 16, and that after a gap of five or six days, Shelley came up with her idea for "Frankenstein" on June 22."But our calculations show that can't be right, because there wouldn't be any moonlight on the night that she says the moon was shining," Olson said.As it turned out, Shelley's description of the moonlight was an invaluable clue for the researchers."
As interesting as this all is and we know writers love to embellish and exagerate which is why their novels are fun to read, it seems like an odd study or paper to write by university students in astronomy unless they are going to be future authors themselves. Understanding our past sky is important, so I would find a study about the Babylonians, Greeks, and Maya interesting as to why they constructed such elaborate structures to observe the sky and seasons, what were they keeping track of in the night sky? Why the elaborate pyramids or structures? What stars and comets existed, what ideas did these people have about astronomy? All questions asked before, I am sure, but further research could do no harm. I am a big fan of history because if heeded can guide us in the present and future, we do indeed need more people aware of our history and how it has made us who we are today.
