The dark years
When the First World war began, the Observatory entered an
era of decline due to a succession of sad events during several decades.
The mobilized astronomers abandoned the ground and the unused instruments
were deteriorated. When Fayet, returned to the Observatory to
succeed Bassot, in 1917, he found all the instruments
in a very bad condition.
Only the spectroheliograph
and the 38cm-telescope were available. The big dome was
in a bad state. Water rusted and the jammed its mechanisms, it could only
be turned with great difficulty by hand. The trapdoor was
thus directed, setteld in the meridian and a program of meridian
observations of tight double stars was realized every night when the
weather was good. The instrument remained unused from 1927 to 1969.
In 1919, the devaluation of
the franc, to 20 centimes of that of the 1914 (1/5th), was catastrophic
for everybody. There were no credit anymore to be dedicated to the French
Observatories. Their restoration, was not a priority in the reconstruction
of a ravaged and destroyed country.
The pension that Bischoffsheim
had leaved to the University of Paris in 1905 had covered, at first very
widely, the general expenses ( staff's salaries, purchase and maintenance
of the material) but with the depreciation of the franc it had became quite
inadequate. The budget of the Observatory suffered from it considerably,
and neither the University nor the founder's heirs, were concerned
about improving the situation.
On Fayet's proposition, the
Executive committee, tried to remedy this state of affairs by deciding
to reduce the number of the astronomers drastically.
They were prompted to go away by being proposed a substantial
promotion.
In that way, Philippe
Lagrula left for the Algiers Observatory with the promise to be
appointed director soon, Emile Paloque, for the Toulouse Observatory
and René Baillaud for the Marseilles Observatory. Gaston Fayet,
who was just named astronomer at the Paris Observatory, offered to
the Paris University to carry on with managing Nice Observatory without
a special salary, but by keeping the director's apartment and the
advantages bound to this responsibility .
Fayet was involved in the measures
of astronomical coordinates in the French Alps and in Corsica (1924-25-26
), as well as in the operation of the World Longitudes at Zi-Ka-Wei, near
Shanghai (1926), and he went on with his researches on comets and
small planets, creating a department specially dedicated to their
regular observation.
The astronomers in place, could establish a
statistical study of asteroids, and publish tables, thanks to a
comet-researcher (1930 ) and a good double astrograph Zeiss (1933 ) intended
for the observation of asteroids, given by Germany, to the Nice
Observatory, as war damages.
The second world war deteriorated
the situation once more.
In 1944, Fayet being at age limit,
retired from the Paris Observatory, but curiously enough, stayed a director
of Nice Observatory, where he continued to live from time to time. Some
years later he stopped every scientific activity.
In 1950, there were only 5 scientists
left and only two instruments able to work, the
double astrographe Zeiss and the 38cm-refractor.
After a reign of about 50 years,
Fayet left Nice Observatory in 1962, 90-year-old! Only went on working,
Hervé Fabre, a relativist and Paul Couteau, a specialist of the
double stars, who played a role afterward.
Fayet left a certain number
of catalogs of observations of the intermediate stars and the tables of
heliocentric coordinates of the small planets, testifying of his personal
research, but he also left a ghostly Observatory!
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