Sky & Telescope - July 2019 - 6

FROM OUR READERS

All Our Fault
couldn't make one of the state park
dates. Between the parks and the farm,
we have about 15 programs per year.
Since September 2000, access to
the internet has exploded with tablets
and smartphones. So last year I wrote
and produced astronomy programs for
beginners in ﬁve lessons and put them
on the internet. There are also two
eclipse videos that explain why eclipses
happen and feature the August 2017
solar eclipse that I ﬁlmed in South
Carolina and the 2019 lunar eclipse this
past January ﬁlmed on our farm. You
can access these videos by going to YouTube and typing in "Crewe Astronomy
Club Lesson 1," and they will all pop up.
I used children's graphics that I drew,
wrote and produced all the animations,
and composed the music. Lesson 5 on
Telescopes Part 2 features the cover

First Look

30). This is a monumental achievement
for sure, and in my opinion one of the
best all-time articles in Sky & Telescope.
This quest required observations over a
period of years and with great patience.
In the days of instant gratiﬁcation,
spending many nights outside with a
telescope in the freezing cold of winter,
the heat of summer, and for years would
be beyond the comprehension of many.
What Tom has done is the "true
heart" or purpose of amateur astronomy, which I've always believed to be
visual observing and documenting
each and every object. With the current
popularity and advancement of digital
imaging, it's great to see that there are
still a few visual observers left, following in the ways of Messier and the
Herschels.

I recently read Roger Sinnott's 75, 50 &
25 Years Ago (S&T: Apr. 2019, p. 7) and
was surprised to see no mention of the
original discoverers of the Crab Pulsar
at Kitt Peak Observatory on January 15,
1969. It was a trio of young astronomers
in Tucson, Arizona, who made the ﬁrst
optical observation of the pulsar, and
not, as Sinnott implies, S. Miller and E.
J. Wampler at Lick Observatory.
Nathaniel Johnston
Dobbs Ferry, New York

"

Roger Sinnott replies: You're right.

An earlier article (S&T: Mar. 1969, p.
135), gives that credit: "The ﬁrst detection
was by W. J. Cocke, M. J. Disney, and D. J.
Taylor, with the 36-inch reﬂector of Steward
Observatory, University of Arizona." That
article goes on to name members of three
other teams at other observatories that also
detected the ﬂashes (a few days later).

Roger Ivester
Boiling Springs, North Carolina

Memories of Canopus
The Herschel Hustle
I want to congratulate Tom Reiland
on his incredible accomplishment of
observing and documenting the entire
Herschel Catalog (S&T: Mar. 2019, p.
6

J U LY 2 0 1 9 * S K Y & T E L E S C O P E

Fred Schaaf's articles on Canopus (S&T:
Feb. 2019, p. 45 and Mar. 2019, p. 45)
reminded me of the ﬁrst time I saw this
star. It was Spring Break 1986, and I was
in Florida. One evening, when we were

p Mimi Wagner loved the views she got
through Cassiopeia, her 10-inch Dobsonian, as
shown in the September 2000 cover photo.

of S&T's September 2000 issue and
explains how it inspired us.
So thank you, S&T, for changing my
life and the lives of so many people by
helping us explore our universe!
Kim Kenny * Crewe, Virginia

by the lagoon at Epcot Center, I noticed
a bright star to the south of Sirius. It
was, of course, Canopus, and seeing it
created another memory for an already
memorable trip.
It was a thrill to gaze upon one of the
fabled southern stars that we northerners can read about but don't often get
an opportunity to see.
Steve Breutzmann
Greenﬁeld, Wisconsin

From our coastal California town
(latitude 36.94976°N), Canopus is one
of our favorite observational objectives. We're slightly north of the 37°
visibility limit without atmospheric
refraction. The star appears just above
the Paciﬁc Ocean for about 20 minutes
during optimal viewing times when
viewed from the 40-foot coastal cliffs.
The object is faintly visible to the naked
eye; through binoculars, it oscillates
between blood-red and deep-blue colors.
I've always enjoyed seeing the star
directly overhead on our winter trips to
the Southern Hemisphere.
Mark Conover
Santa Cruz, California

MARSHA ROBINSON

Ever since you published Kelly Beatty's
cover story "Where Are the Young
Astronomers?" (S&T: Sept. 2000, p. 82),
that article has haunted me.
The Crewe Astronomy Club was
founded in 1998, and as many other
clubs do, we brought out our telescopes
and explained the night sky to the
general public at ﬁve Virginia state
parks. But since September 2000, we
altered the course of our programs to let
children have a hands-on approach to
discovering the night sky. We stopped
bringing the fancier telescopes - equatorial, tracking, Go To - and brought
12 smaller refractors, reﬂectors, and
several Dobsonians that kids could
operate and let them have control. My
wife and I also built an observatory
and science center in our barn so kids
could come to our 30-acre farm if they
Sky & Telescope - July 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - July 2019
