Astronomy Hacks

About the Authors

Robert Bruce Thompson became interested in astronomy when he was very young. In 1957, when he was four, his parents took him out in the front yard one autumn evening to look for Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. Someone shouted, “There it is!,” and he watched, fascinated, as the bright pinpoint of Sputnik blazed its way across the night sky. Robert was hooked on science and space from that moment forward.

By the time he was 10, Robert was using an old binocular that his grandmother had given him to observe open star clusters and other wonders of the night sky. That Christmas, his parents gave him a small refractor that allowed him for the first time to observe Luna at the unprecedented magnification of 100X. That scope held his interest for a couple of years, but, struck by an early case of “aperture fever,” he decided to grind his own mirror and build his own 6” Newtonian reflector telescope. In those days, even urban backyards were dark, and Robert spent the next several years exploring the night sky with that 6” scope. Most clear nights, he observed Luna, the planets, double stars, and many of the brighter deep-sky objects, including most of the Messier list.

Alas, life intervened. College, graduate school, jobs, marriage, family— everything seemed to get in the way of continuing the hobby. Then, one evening in late 2000, as Barbara and Robert were walking the dogs, Barbara expressed an interest in astronomy and suggested they buy a telescope. Robert ordered ...