Sky & Telescope - November 2021 - 14

LEAH TISCIONE / S&T
80 YEARS: WHERE WE'VE BEEN by William Sheehan and Klaus Brasch
A Golden Age for
Two veteran observers reflect on the hobby's
modest beginnings.
W
ith this issue, Sky & Telescope marks 80 years of
existence. Having commenced publication in 1941
as the merger of The Sky and The Telescope, the
resulting magazine was immediately successful, though it
really came into its own in the postwar decades of the 1950s
and 1960s. That era happened to coincide with the first
high-altitude rocket tests, artificial satellites, and probes to
the planets. The era reached its dramatic climax in 1969 with
astronauts walking on the surface of the Moon.
In some ways, those same decades were a golden age for
amateur astronomy, too. Every era consists of an alloy of precious
metal and dross, and the one the authors came of age
in was no different. In our golden age, amateurs could still
make cutting-edge observations with modest backyard scopes
(often homebuilt) and their own eyes - something that
14 NOVEMBER 2021 * SKY & TELESCOPE
probably seems rather quaint today. And in many ways, it was
quaint. From the perspective of the 21st century, it's almost
impossible to imagine just how exciting it was to live at a
time when our understanding of the solar system was little
more than a crude sketch, and when so much knowledge still
lay in the future.
Our memories of that time are colored and rendered
imperfect by the gauzy haze of nostalgia, and doubtless capture
only a partial truth. But this is our story - a personal
and idiosyncratic view of the times we grew up in and of
the iconic magazine that did so much to stimulate what has
become a lifelong passion for both of us.
A Good Beginning
One important way our golden age differs from today is how
information is disseminated. Instant access to vast amounts
of data provided by the internet - including the latest images
from rovers on Mars or orbiters around Jupiter - would have

Sky & Telescope - November 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - November 2021

Contents
Sky & Telescope - November 2021 - Cover1
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Sky & Telescope - November 2021 - 1
Sky & Telescope - November 2021 - Contents
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