We’re in the midst of a particularly cloudy spell here in West Michigan. With all the clouds and snow, we’ve not been able to see the sky much. But it isn’t cloudy everywhere and professional and amateur astronomers around the world remain hard at work.

Professional astronomers report their advances in many high-brow journals, including The Astronomical Journal, the Astrophysical Journal, and Astronomy and Astrophysics. I don’t suppose many of you subscribe to these publications; they aren’t easy reads and don’t make good coffee-table books.

But if you’re ever interested to see what collectively the professional astronomical community does with its time, have a look at arXiv.org. This website is a document server where authors post their work before they submit to the major research journals. ArXiv.org is hosted by the Cornell University Library, with partial financial support from the National Science Foundation.

Here are a few of the astrophysics papers recently submitted to the archive.

How about having a look at “The Elliptical-Spheroidal and Elliptical-Elliptical Galaxy Dichotomies,” by John Kormendy at the University of Texas, Austin. Professor Kormendy analyzed a large amount of existing data on galaxies to conclude that galaxies known as spheroidals are not dwarf elliptical galaxies, but defunct late-type galaxies. This solves a long-standing problem in galaxy structure and evolution, believe it or not.

Check out “Discovery of Very High-Energy Gamma-Ray Radiation from the BL Lac 1ES 0806+524,” by a team of no fewer than 92 authors from around the world, literally. You might wonder how so many scientists can write a twelve-page paper (double spaced, with a few figures). The truth is that the paper was likely written by just one or two authors, who included the other collaborating scientists in the author list.

This work is based on data collected by an instrument called The Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS, another clever acronym). VERITAS is a new, major ground-based gamma-ray observatory. The observatory consists of an array of twelve-meter-diameter (almost forty feet) telescopes located in Amado, Arizona.

Or you could read “Revisiting the Confrontation of the Energy Conditions with Supernovae Data,” which will soon appear the Journal of Modern Physics D. The authors (M.P. Lima, S.D.P. Vitenti and M.J. Reboucas) write: “In the standard Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) approach to model the Universe the violation of the so-called energy conditions is related to some important properties of the Universe as, for example, the current and the inflationary accelerating expansion phases.” And it gets worse from there.

Anyway, these are just three of the sixty-six astrophysics papers that were submitted to arXiv.org by 5 am EST today. Presently, about 5,000 papers are submitted to arXiv.org each month, across the disciplines it hosts: astrophysics, physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, and statistics.

The average montly upload rate to arxiv.org (click the image to hit the arxiv.org statistics page).

In the seventeen-some years arXiv.org has been collecting submissions, it has amassed more than half a million works.

One of the many, an oldie but goodie, is “The Ammount of Interstellar Carbon Locked in Solid Hydrogenated Amorphous Carbon,” by D.G. Furton, J.W. Laiho and A.N. Witt, from 1999. Complete with the misspelling in the title. I’ve always needed a good editor.

And all of these works are there for you to browse — for free — when the clouds in West Michigan keep you from gazing at the stars.

This column originally appeared in the Grand Haven Tribune on 5 December 2008.

Have you ever had one of those days were suddenly you see your Universe in a whole new light? A day when it happens like in a work of fiction where the protagonist receives an electric shock or a blow to the head and instantly sees his place in the world, his relationships with other people and the vastness of the Universe for what they “really” are? A day when you perceive everything inside out and sideways?

Some say that perception is everything. Some say that the only reality is the one each and every one of us individually constructs in our minds, formed from our accumulated experience. You may find believing along these lines has some merit, especially if you’ve ever had one of those days when everything changes.

These reasoners contend that Science, for example, explains nothing; that Science is only a framework which allows us to come to grips with how the Universe behaves. Science allows us to make testable predictions about the Universe, and all is good when we perceive the Universe to behave as we predicted.

A leading ancient Roman science/math/astronomer/philosopher man named Ptolemy went to great lengths to write up his Science of the Universe in the second century AD. His volume on astronomy, entitled “Almagast”, described his view of the Universe — the sun, moon, stars and the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Ptolemy’s model so accurately predicted the positions and complicated motions of everything that it worked nearly flawlessly for about 1,400 years.

The most notable attributes of Ptolemy’s model of the Universe are that it was earth-centered, and that the Earth was totally motionless, the absolute center of everything.

But then one day (figuratively), in the early part of the fifteenth century, it all changed. A polish astronomer named Nicolaus Copernicus saw the solar system in a whole new light. While not the first to have this idea, Copernicus was the first to lay out formally, for other scientists to ponder, the Science of a sun-centered Universe.

Copernicus’ best seller was entitled “De revolutionibus orbium coelestium”, which, in case your Latin is rusty, means something like “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres.”

The most notable attributes of Copernicus’ model of the Universe are that it was sun-centered, and that the Earth spun and orbited the sun with the other planets, no special place at all, except that we are here.

So Ptolemy had it all wrong. Or did he? The facts are that even after the Copernican Revolution, Ptolemy’s model predicted more accurately the positions of the sun, moon, stars and planets. It was only after being tweaked by scientists down the road that the notion of a sun-centered Universe — the Universe that is now our reality — prevailed.

With this little story (told briefly and probably inaccurately) in mind, next time you have a chance, step out of yourself and try to have a look at your Universe from the side. I’ve found that it helps to have your mind uncluttered by your everyday perceptions, and to have a star-filled sky overhead.

You may also want to have nearby some Tylenol. If you’ve ever had one of those days where you suddenly see the Universe in a whole new light, you know how bad of a headache you get.

This column originally appeared in the Grand Haven Tribune on 14 November 2008.

If you enjoy reading this column in the Friday paper, today is a milestone of sorts. My column first ran in the Grand Haven Tribune on Friday Oct. 13, 2006, two years ago last week. This present column is the first of a third year running, and the 105th installment overall.

At my day job, it’s midterm exam time. As though the University community is collectively having a midlife crisis, students and professors are struggling through the give and take of exams and coming to grips with the reality of what each class is going to turn out to be.

Since I’m in an exam frame of mind, I’ve put together this week a midterm exam for my readers. So perk up, put a fine point on your favorite pencil, and get to work. Here are ten true or false questions covering the past two years of reading:

1. The full moon always rises at sunset and sets at sunrise.
2. Interstellar space — the space between the stars in our Milky Way galaxy — is almost perfectly transparent.
3. Red stars like Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion are hotter than blue stars like Rigel, which also happens to be in Orion.
4. It is sometimes possible to see the planet Venus high overhead in the middle of the night.
5. At solar noon on the first day of summer in Grand Haven, a flagpole doesn’t cast a shadow because the sun is directly overhead.
6. The North Star, or Polaris, is a special star because it is always nearly directly overhead.
7. When the moon looks like a thin crescent early in a lunar month — when it looks like a cookie with a large bite chomped out of it — it appears this way because it is just slipping out from earth’s shadow.
8. In early October, let’s say on the 10th, the sun sets exactly between the pier heads of the Grand River channel if you watch the sunset while sitting on the bench on the boardwalk across from Butch’s. If you go back to the same spot to watch the sun set a week or so later you will see the sun set a bit south of the south pier head.
9. On a clear, dark night you can see with your naked eye almost a million stars.
10. A ray of light does not travel from the sun to earth almost instantaneously — it takes about 8 minutes.

Wipe the sweat from your brow. It’s over. How did you do? I think I went easy on you. But I think that about almost every exam I give. Look for the answer key in next week’s column.

With that behind us, we can get back to what’s fun. This week the sky is dark both at night and in the early morning because the moon is edging toward new. It’s prime stargazing time, so get out and see what you can.

And thanks for reading. I’ve enjoyed writing these columns and look forward to getting your mind off the material world, at least briefly, in the weeks, months and years ahead.

This column originally appeared in the Grand Haven Tribune on 17 October 2008.

Outside on a clear night one can see about two thousand stars with the naked eye. With 1 trillion dollars, you could buy all of those stars if each cost 500 million dollars.

Astronomers estimate that the Milky Way galaxy, the galaxy that is home to our solar system and just about everything we can see at night, contains about 200 billion stars. If each star cost just one dollar, with 1 trillion dollars you could buy 5 Milky Way galaxies.

Cosmologists contend that the entire observable universe contains only 100 billion galaxies — one tenth of a trillion.

1 trillion dollar bills stitched together end to end in a line would stretch about 94 million miles — a bit more than the distance from earth to the sun. 1 trillion dollar bills stitched together to form a quilt would cover an area about the size of the state of Connecticut.

1 trillion dollars in US quarters would have a mass something over 20 billion kilograms, or a weight of 25 thousand tons. A stack of 1 trillion quarters — 1.7 million kilometers tall — would extend from the center to the surface of the moon.

1 trillion dollars of gas at 4 dollars per gallon burned in a car that gets 20 miles per gallon would pay for a 5 trillion mile road trip. In the US, collectively we drive a total of about 2 trillion miles in passenger cars each year, according to US Department of Transportation statistics.

5 trillion miles is, along a straight line path, about the diameter of our solar system. Along a more curvy path, 5 trillion miles is about 200 million times around the earth.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was founded and first funded by the federal government in 1958. In it’s 50 year history, NASA has put men on the moon, launched space probes that have visited all the planets of our solar system, orbited space telescopes, space shuttles, and space stations, and has funded basic space-science research, training thousands of students (including yours truly). NASA has been allocated a total of 800 billion dollars over the past 50 years, 200 billion dollars less than 1 trillion dollars. This is in 2007 inflation-adjusted “constant” dollars.

Spending money at the rate of 1 dollar per second, 1 trillion dollars would support a spending spree nearly 32 thousand years long. Traveling at a rate of 186 thousand miles per second, a ray of light can make it from the center of the Milky Way galaxy to us here on earth in about the same amount of time.

If we borrowed 1 trillion dollars at 6% APR with terms similar to a conventional home loan the debt would accumulate interest at a rate of $1929 per second. If we paid the debt off at the rate of $2000 per second we could discharge it in about 56 years — a working lifetime. By the end of this massive loan we would have paid a total of nearly 3.5 trillion dollars, putting a tidy 2.5 trillion dollars in the coffers of whoever made us the loan.

It is sometimes said of our society that we don’t get to know our neighbors and our neighborhoods as well as we used to, or as well as we perhaps should. Stretching this sentiment more than a little bit, I offer the following tidbits about our solar neighborhood.

The earth is about eight thousand miles in diameter, or about four thousand miles in radius. A straight-line trek around the earth would be a trek of about twenty five thousand miles.

Twenty-five thousand miles is a long way, but if you traveled this distance straight toward the moon you would be only one tenth of the way there. The moon is about two hundred fifty thousand miles from earth.

The moon is about two thousand miles in diameter, or only about one thousand miles in radius, so in this dimension is only about one-quarter the size of earth. By volume, the moon is only about two percent the size of earth (because the volume of a sphere is proportional to the cube of its radius). And because the moon is made of material that is on average slightly less dense than earth, the moon’s mass is only about one percent of earth’s mass.

Next Friday the moon is new, which means that it lies about in the same direction as the sun. A two hundred fifty thousand mile straight-line trip to the moon would get you only about one four hundredth of the way to the sun. The sun is about ninety three million miles away

Once at the sun you would be facing a surfaceless sphere of incandescent gas. And you would be hot! The sun’s visible surface is about six thousand degrees Celcius, which is almost eleven thousand degrees Fahrenheit. But know that the sun’s surface is only an optical illusion. The sun has no surface; what we see as the sun’s surface is the layer where the gas density is just high enough that we can see no deeper.

The sun that we see is something more than eight hundred thousand miles in diameter, about one hundred times the size of earth. By volume, the sun is more than a million times larger than earth. But because the sun is made of gas and the earth of rock, the mass of the sun is only about three hundred times the mass of earth.

What else is there nearby in our solar system neighborhood? A few of rocky planets somewhat like earth – Mercury, Venus and Mars – and a few gas planets – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – which have more in common with the sun than the earth, and some minor planets and debris.

All of these rocky and gassy bits are arranged in a pancake-shaped neighborhood that is approximately ten billion miles in diameter that is otherwise empty space.

In fact the material world, from large to small, is empty space. All matter in our experience is composed of atoms, with nuclei of relatively big and heavy protons and neutrons surrounded by relatively tenuous shells of tiny and light electrons.

Nearly all of the mass of our world is concentrated in atomic nuclei, which are so compact as to be about one hundred thousand times smaller than the electron shells which push gently together when atoms stack together to make material bits we can hold in our hands.

Like the solar system, the atoms which compose everything in it are almost entirely empty space.

From what I saw and have heard from a few determined shooting star watchers, the Perseid meteor shower earlier this week was less than spectacular in West Michigan.

I set out into the Big Lake on my little boat to watch the show Monday night from as big and dark a place as I could find. Exiting the Grand River pier heads at just about sunset, I was first glad to be in the company of a small fleet of sail boats from the Grand River Sailing Club escorting out the sailboat Earth Voyager.

Earth Voyager is a 60’ trimaran which visited Grand Haven for several days last week on a tour to spread a message of preservation and restoration of the Great Lakes.

Earth Voyager sails into the sunset out of Grand Haven.

As Earth Voyager sailed into the sunset I settled into the cockpit of my boat with a cup of coffee to wait for dark.

The wind was light out of the northwest and a very gentle, small swell was running in the lake, a remnant of the wind that blew much stronger earlier in the day, as I ghosted my way away from shore in the company of a great many salmon fishing boats.

With the lake water temperature in the low 50s, the gentle breeze was awfully cold. And darkness was a long time coming. But by 10:30 pm all of the fishing boats were back in port and I had the lake and a mostly dark sky all to myself.

The waxing gibbous moon hung to the south low and bright near Jupiter and the stars of the constellation Sagittarius. Lyra and Cygnus were high overhead and little Delphinus was playfully jumping out of the Milky Way as I set about spotting some Perseids.

I was reminded of part of the chorus of a favorite Greatful Dead song Ripple:

There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone

Alone I was, but precious few Persieds did I spot.

The first two bright meteors I saw were fast and bright, but were obviously not Perseids. Perseid meteors seem to come from the constellation Perseus, which late at night this time of year is to the southeast. The meteors I saw traveled from north to south, approximately parallel to the lake shore three miles off.

As time wore on I did see a few Perseids, but tired of the cold and the rolling of my boat, I headed for shore around midnight.

Late the next day, I heard from friends and neighbors who broke their Tuesday routine to view the meteor shower early, early in the morning. From the beach to back yards, impressions were the same: the Perseid meteor shower this year was more of a light drizzle.

According to data gathered and analyzed by the International Meteor Organization (http://imo.net/ on the web), the Perseids this year came in at a bad time for us. The shower peaked early Tuesday evening, when more than twice as many shooting stars shot across the sky compared to early Tuesday morning. This was for us about half a day too late. Our view of the Perseids on Tuesday evening was hindered by the nearly full moon.

Perseid 2008 data from the IMO.

There’s always next year.

If astronomy begins where earth leaves off, then the following news tidbit is just within the purview of my blog.

On Tuesday, May 27, French skydiver Michel Fournier was to jump from a balloon from the edge of space, 25 miles above the plains of Saskatchewan, Canada and parachute safely back to earth. Fournier’s jump was to be the culmination of a project he began in 1986 — a project he’s called Le Grand Saut (The Great Leap) — to push the highest parachute jump record to new heights.

Fournier’s jump did not come off as planned because the humongous helium balloon that was to carry him aloft broke away from its guy wires before launch. His first attempt in 2003 also went bad when the balloon tore before launch.

The acceleration due to gravity near Earth’s surface is 9.8 meters/second per second straight down, as anyone who has taken an introductory physics class knows. In the absence of air resistance, fall for 30 seconds and end up moving at nearly 300 m/s, which is about 670 mph, about the speed of sound.

No one knows this better than Colonel Joseph Kittinger (USAF, retired). Col. Kittinger in August of 1960 jumped from the open gondola of a gigantic helium balloon at an altitude of 31.3 km (19.5 miles) and free-fell back to Earth, opening his parachute just 5 km (3 miles) above the ground.

In the near perfect vacuum of the high stratosphere, Col. Kittinger reached a top free-fall speed of over 600 mph — nearly mach 1 — wearing only a partially pressurized suit.

A balloon is necessary to reach these altitudes because airplanes cannot fly nearly this high.

Kittinger fell for about 15 seconds before popping a small stabilization chute to prevent him from spinning out of control. In just this short time he had fallen about a mile. Then, after another 4 and a quarter minutes or so, he opening his main parachute, after falling all but the last 3 miles of the way back to the ground.

Finally, 13 minutes and 45 seconds after jumping from the gondola of his balloon, Col. Kittinger landed softly in the New Mexico desert, his only injury a swollen hand due to a small gear failure.

Col. Kittinger’s jump is documented in the 29 August 1960 issue of life magazine, and in the December 1960 issue of National Geographic, and various places online. In these articles (in print) there are incredible pictures of him making the jump.

Michel Fournier wants to break the records set in 1960 by Col. Kittinger: the highest balloon ascent, highest parachute jump, and highest speed without a vehicle. Fournier wants to jump from an altitude of 40 km (25 miles).

The extra altitude in the near vacuum of the high stratosphere will allow Fournier to freefall to a greater speed, perhaps even going supersonic at 450 m/s (1,000 mph) before air resistance, and ultimately a parachute, slow him for a safe landing.

Fournier, on his website www.legrandsaut.org, says he’ll try again in August after this latest failed attempt.

Wednesday afternoon last week when the clouds cleared away my son and I headed to the beach to catch some rays and have a look at the lake. I was filled with envy to see a lone sailboat nicely making way a distance off shore in a gentle northeasterly breeze.

There is a big hole in the bottom of my sailboat. I excavated it when I was prepping the hull for this year’s coat of bottom paint. Now I’m waiting for a nice stretch of warm, dry weather to repair the hole with fiberglass cloth and epoxy.

I’ve got to roll Wednesday’s envy into encouragement; launch day seems a long ways off.

A ways beyond the sailboat we saw on Wednesday was the horizon, cutting a sharp line between the deep blue lake and the high blue sky. It was a really clear afternoon and I got to thinking how far we could see.

Now I’m pretty science/math minded so for me it wasn’t too difficult later that evening, armed with a calculator and a cold PBR, to convince myself that from the beach the horizon is only about three miles away. Not so far as one might imagine.

The horizon is so close because standing on the beach I don’t stand too tall. Isaac Newton famously quoted: “If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” If I were a little taller I would be able to see a little further.

The distance to the horizon approximately scales as the square root of the height of one’s vantage point. Eyes six feet about the beach put the horizon at about three miles; eyes twenty-four feet above the beach (6 x 4) put the horizon about six miles away (square root of 4, times 3). And so on.

A more detail-minded author would go on to write that the true horizon is actually more distant than pure geometry indicates because of what’s called atmospheric refraction, and that we can see things over the horizon if they are tall.

Under normal circumstances the atmosphere acts to slightly bend light rays around earth’s curved surface, extending a bit the distance to the horizon. But the extension is normally not too great.

I’ve wanted to sail my little boat to Chicago for many years. As the crow flies the trip is about one hundred miles. On a dark night, Chicago’s sodium-vapor-colored glow is easily visible to the southwest. But can we see the tops of Chicago’s skyscrapers on the best of days?

Well, if we could see the top of the Sears Tower then someone up there could see us. How far can an observer 1,300 feet high see? Only about 50 miles. We can’t see across the lake.

But a colleague of mine once related to me an atmospheric phenomenon whereby a view of a distant shoreline is reflected, in a manner not unlike an upside-down mirage, to an keen observer on the other side of the lake. My colleague claims in this way to once have seen across Lake Michigan when he was working on Chicago’s north shore, before West MI was on his professional horizon.

I was skeptical until I consulted the ultimate oracle — The Internet — to learn that indeed such a thing can happen.

I guess I’ll just have to watch for the shore from this side of the lake until I repair my boat.

Look for a new post on or about May 25.

What do you see when you look at the full moon? The old man’s face? A rabbit (could it be the Energizer Bunny)? Green cheese?

Image courtesty NASA’s photojournal website.

Grab a pair of binoculars and take a look at the moon over the next few days. The moon will be full on Sunday, bright and high a few hours after sunset, an easy target for binoculars or a small telescope.

Even with the unaided eye it is plain to see that the moon is not featureless. Ancient astronomers noted differences between the regions of the lunar face that appear darker and those that appear brighter. The dark regions have come to be called mare (pronounced mahr-ey, with accent on the first syllable), which is Latin for sea. The brighter regions are the lunar highlands.

I always see a bunny when I look at the moon. The bunny is sketched out by the lunar maria (seas, plural, again with accent on the first syllable), with the highlands providing background contrast. My moon bunny stands upright and faces to my left when the moon is overhead, but he lays on his back when full moon when it is setting.

Mare Crisium (the sea of storms) is perhaps the easiest mare to spot. It is the smaller, almost perfectly round mare that appears on the upper, right side of the moon. Mare Crisium doesn’t make any notable part of the moon bunny.

Moon bunny’s ears are made of two large, joined-together maria just next to Mare Crisium: Mare Foecunditatis (the sea of fertility) on the right and Mare Tranquillitatis (the sea of tranquility) just next to it on the left.

The mare that makes the bunny’s head and holds up his ears is Mare Serenitatis (the sea of serenity). Mare Imbrium (the sea of rains) and other large maria, all blended together, make the bunny’s body and legs. Can you see the bunny now?

One of the several famous large craters on the moon is at the lower edge of Mare Imbrium: the carter Copernicus. Copernicus stands out as a white spot on the bunny’s body.

Another famous lunar crater is visible in the bright area on the lower portion of the moon’s face: the crater Tycho. Tycho is larger than Copernicus, and it stands out even in the lunar highlands because of the long, white rays that streak away from it.

Twelve men have walked on the moon. This week marks the 36th anniversary of Apollo 16, the second to last of NASA’s Apollo moon program.

On April 20, 1972 the lunar module Orion landed on the moon carrying Mission Commander John Young (9th man on the moon) and Lunar Module Pilot Charles Duke (10th man on the moon). Both men cruised the lunar surface on foot and in their lunar rover for thee days while Command Module Pilot Thomas Mattingly orbited overhead in the command module, named Casper.

Apollo 16 landed behind the bunny’s ears, in the bright expanse of lunar highland between Mare Tranquillitatis (where Apollo 11 landed and Neil Armstrong said “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”) and the crater Tycho.

Image courtesty A NASA’s Apollo landing website. Click for larger image. This map is rotated about 45 degrees clockwise compared to the image of the moon above.

Even if you look close you won’t be able to see the American flags (among other debris) left behind by the Apollo moon walkers. But if you believe that the moon landings were a hoax, proof is on the way. With the launch of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter later this year, close-up pictures of the moon’s surface — including the Apollo landing sites — will soon be available.

Look for a new post on or about April 27.

Date: March 8, 1978.

Very good night out. It was clear but not cold. The temperature was 24F at 9:15 pm.

I saw for the second time the Andromeda galaxy. It was exceptionally fine, unlike the first time I saw it. I did not do a drawing of it because I did not have time.

I found out how to use the setting circles on my telescope. They worked very well. I didn’t index to anything important because I was too excited. But they seemed to be working fine.

I also noted when I was looking at the Orion Nebula at about 9:00 a satellite. It moved into my field of view and I followed it almost to Jupiter!

Date: March 9, 1978.

I went to the park and setup there. The seeing conditions were very good, but there were too many car lights. But I did get some stuff done.

First of all I saw a meteor. It lasted for about 5 seconds and was very bright. Then I turned to Jupiter and saw its equatorial bands again. I changed to high power and was only disappointed.

I also found Saturn again. It was as good as ever. I could see one division in the rings and one line on the planet itself. I turned to high power and it looked very good. This is what it looked like:

I also saw a thing, I think it was Uranus or Neptune because it was too small of a disk to be Venus and it looked kind of greenish. But I could not make much out of it because it was so low on the east horizon and the turbulence was very bad.

I also saw one of the moons of Mars, probably Phobos.

The journal entries quoted above are from a few pages I have kept with me the past 30 years. Out of vanity, I won’t tell you how old I was when I wrote them.

At the time, my family and I were living in suburban Chicago. And in spite of the less-than-ideal setting, this is when and where I guess I got my start in astronomy.

The observations I wrote about were made with a six-inch reflecting telescope that was bigger and heavier than me at the time. This was not my first telescope, however. My first was a small K-mart refractor, from Santa. I bought the six-inch scope on the standard Furton family capital purchasing plan: I covered half of the cost with funds from my paper route; the other half was covered by the heads of the household.

The scope, alas, I jettisoned in bits and pieces over the years. I’ve bought and made other telescopes, and I’ve looked through some of the largest telescopes in the world, but none can outdo the one that gave me the first good look at so many things that were (and still are) out of my reach.

I still enjoy viewing the celestial objects I first enthusiastically discovered more than 30 years ago. And even though amazing images of the moon, planets, nebulae, stars and galaxies are available in picture books and on the Internet, no picture on a printed page or image on the biggest, brightest computer display comes close to capturing the essence of Saturn, for example, when you catch a glimpse of it from your own back yard with your own eyes.

Thank you for reading – and sometimes writing back. For what I like most is sharing with others the small bit of wonder that has remained with me since I was a child.

Look for a new post on or about 20 April 2008.