Sky and Telescope - December 2017 - 8

From Our Readers

ing in my chest. The loud booms were
distinctly separated by approximately
1 full second. Within the next 3 or 4
seconds the crackling sounds faded as if
receding into the distance.
So I guess it was a near miss. Sometimes you just get lucky.

omer knows better, of course. But it isn't
our gullibility that the anonymous perpetrators prey upon. Rather, every year
thousands of people go outside expecting
to see an event that supposedly won't
happen again for 60,000 years - only to
be disappointed when it does not occur.

Stephen Launi
Goodyear, Arizona

Bill Warren
Grifﬁn, Georgia

Fool Me Once . . .

A Matter of Perspective

As author Jerry Lodriguss points out in
his excellent article on photographic
plagiarism and fraud (S&T: Sept. 2017,
p. 66), it's difﬁcult to fool astronomers
- but it happens. However, it is very
easy to fool the general public.
Perhaps the most blatant example is
the ongoing "Mars hoax" - the anonymous e-mail that has circulated every
year since 2003. It invariably shows a
doctored photo of the Moon and Mars,
declaring that, on a certain date in
August, those two objects will be the
same size in the night sky. Every astron-

Given how technical and "sterile"
astronomy has become today - for both
professionals and amateurs - it's good
to keep in mind these words from James
Muirden's Amateur Astronomer's Handbook: "The study of the heavens from a
purely aesthetic point of view is scorned
in this technological age. Let us never
forget that astronomy loses half of its
meaning for the observer who never lets
his telescope range across the remote

1967

1992

º December 1942
Nova News "[F]inding a new star
must rank with the greatest of thrills.
At least two regular readers of Sky
and Telescope were fortunate in
spotting Nova Puppis before they
had heard of it from others . . .
"[From] Wm. J. Gallagher, of
Cincinnati, Ohio, we received the
following 'prediction' of the discovery by Dr. Dawson: 'There is a new
star. I think it is in Argo. (I have no
maps.) I first saw it at 4:00 a.m.,
today (November 11th). It appeared
to be about as bright as Regulus
at that time, but it was as bright as
Aldebaran by 6:00 a.m.'"
Nova Puppis 1942 was big news
in that December issue. The third
brightest nova of the 20th century
was ﬁrst spotted by Bernhard H.
Dawson in Argentina on November
8-9. Gallagher was correct about
its location in Argo, since 12 years
earlier that ancient constellation had
been ofﬁcially subdivided into several smaller ones, including Puppis.

D E C E M B E R 2 0 17 * S K Y & T E L E S C O P E

James Mullaney
Lewes, Delaware

Notebook Envy
Bob King's article on keeping an observing log (S&T: Sept. 2017, p. 32) shows
some pages from S. N. Johnson-Roehr's
notebook. Where can I obtain that
notebook - less the sketches, of course?
Grant Thompson
Summerland, British Columbia

JR replies: Unfortunately, it's not in
print anymore. Wish I'd bought 10 of
them when I had the chance.

FOR THE RECORD

* In the news item about Ceres (S&T: July
2017, p. 11), the citation should be to this
magazine's December 2016 issue.

SUBMISSIONS: Write to Sky & Telescope, 90 Sherman St., Cambridge, MA 02140-3264, U.S.A. or email: letters@
skyandtelescope.com. Please limit your comments to 250 words; letters may be edited for brevity and clarity.

75, 50 & 25 YEARS AGO by Roger W. Sinnott
1942

glories of the sky with uncovered head
and humble heart."

º December 1967
Potassium Flares "HD 117,043 is a
rather ordinary dwarf star of spectral type G6. Very surprisingly, on
one coudé spectrogram obtained
with Haute Provence Observatory's
76-inch reflector, this star showed
bright lines of neutral potassium,
at wavelengths of 7665 and 7699
angstroms.
"When a second such 'potassium flare' was detected a couple
of years later in the spectrum of
a K7 dwarf, HD 88,230, a systematic search for new cases of
the puzzling phenomenon was
started at the French observatory
. . . [Another] search for potassium
emission among 162 bright stars
was undertaken at the University of
California . . ."
When no more ﬂares were
found, astronomers looked for
an artiﬁcial origin. Spectra of the
ﬂames of ordinary matches were
obtained with the coudé spectrograph of the Lick 120-inch reﬂector,
and they showed strong emission
lines of potassium. It seems likely

that a smoking astronomer at the
guiding eyepiece had been the
unwitting source of stray light!
º December 1992
Voyagers Sail On "NASA's most
famous interplanetary spacecraft
recently celebrated their 15th year
in space. Generally, the two probes
continue to operate well. A key
component of Voyager 1's telemetry
system failed on September 1st, but
an onboard computer immediately
switched to a backup unit. Scientists hope the far-flung twins will
survive until one of them crosses
the heliopause, the outer limit of
the Sun's magnetic influence, and
moves into interstellar space."
Voyager 1 did just that, in 2012,
while Voyager 2 has yet to leave the
heliopause. Early on, both spacecraft visited Jupiter and Saturn,
then Voyager 2 made ﬂybys of
Uranus and Neptune (the only craft
to do so). NASA ofﬁcials marked the
40th anniversary of the Voyagers'
launches a few months ago.

Sky and Telescope - December 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky and Telescope - December 2017