MIRAGES

ASTRONOMY

by Donald H. Menzel With 210 photos, including 50 in color, and with 85 drawings and 24 sky maps by Ching-Sung Yü EDITOR'S CHOICE: For those who want to know what is beyond the heavens where even the Golden Sea Gulls fly, this is a book qualified to be a best seller in our times. Books of this nature are, unfortunately, often lost in the "Scientific Department" of a bookstore. We are honored, therefore, to make this special presentation to our readers.

The author and Dr. Yü over the past decade. The combination of text, photographs and drawings makes this the most authoritative, dramatic and up-to-date account of astronomy yesterday and today. It is a book for anyone who wants to learn what science now knows about our universe.

The Author

Dr. Donald H. Menzel has combined teaching with research at Harvard since 1932. He is now Paine Professor of Practical Astronomy there, and from 1952 to 1966 was Director of the Harvard Observatory. As an authority on the sun, Dr. Menzel observed 13 total eclipses between 1930 and 1970, including expeditions to the U.S.S.R., Mexico and Canada. He developed the first coronagraph in the United States and was instrumental in establishing observatories at Climax, Colorado, on Sacramento Peak in New Mexico, and near Fort Davis, Texas.

Dr. Menzel is Research Scientist on the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory staff, a past President of the American Astronomical Society and a member of many other scholarly societies. He is the author of a popular Field Guide to the Stars and Planets, several text books and many articles.

He completed this book while directing the Harvard expedition to view the March 1970 total eclipse in Southern Mexico.

The Artist

Dr. Ching-Sung Yü, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at Hood College, began his career as a Professor at the University of Amoy, China, in 1927. He later became Director of the National Nanking Observatory. Forced to leave China in 1947, he taught at the University of Toronto before going to Hood College in 1955.

Drawing on his rich experience as head of the Harvard Observatory, Dr. Menzel reviews all the instruments and techniques that have revolutionized astronomy: powerful radio transmitters and ultra-sensitive receivers, electronic amplification of light with "image tubes," orbiting telescopes, rocket-borne cameras that translate photographs into electronic impulses, atomic clocks that measure in nanoseconds, laser beams that measure the distance to the moon to within a foot, and computers that instantly calculate every detail of space flights.

Most exciting of all are Dr. Menzel's analyses of the latest probes of Mars and Venus, the mysterious quasars and pulsars, the latest theories of the origin of the universe and the possibility of life on another planet. Another high-point is the account of a star from its prenatal state as a cloud of dust and gas, through its life as a stable, shining body, to its decline into a black clinker coursing through interstellar space.

Magnificently supplementing Dr. Menzel's text are 319 illustrations, including 210 photographs from the world's great observatories and the NASA space flights. Equally important are 85 diagrams beautifully executed by Dr. Ching-Sung Yü and 24 sky maps developed by We are generally not in the bookselling business, and we sincerely urge our readers to patronize their favorite booksellers. However, as a special service to those readers who are remote from convenient shopping facilities, we have reserved a limited supply of "Astronomy." Our readers may purchase this book from us at the price of seventeen dollars fifty cents ($17.50) per copy postpaid, for a limited time only.

Reg Manning Etches Arizona on Glass

Engraving on glass is an ancient art which was being practiced centuries B.C., when the first crude grinding tools were invented. Two principal methods are used to engrave glass stone wheel and copper wheel. (Engraving is also done with a diamond point, held like a pencil, for scratching lines on the glass. "Etching" is done with acids, and "frosting" is done with sand or finer abrasives, blasted under air pressure.) Cut glass, like that seen in huge punch bowls and other beautiful crystal ware, is done with stone wheels, fine quality "grind stones," ranging in size from small coin-size discs, to huge stones three feet in diameter.

Copper wheel engraving is the technique used in producing most "intaglio" pictures on glass. This is the technique employed to engrave famous "Steuben" crystal, (and it is the technique which I used to engrave all the pieces photographed for ARIZONA HIGHWAYS). The engraving is actually done with little copper wheels, in an open end lathe, varying in diameter from mere pin heads to four-inch discs. The artisan keeps dabbing the wheel with a mixture of oil and emery abrasive, which converts it into a little grindstone. It is a very slow and exacting art. I doubt if there are as many as a dozen copper wheel engravers in America.

My career as a glass engraver began some three decades ago when I engraved a crude intaglio on a small vase (for my wife, Ruth) using little carbide tools in a Sears hand drill-grinding device. I didn't know enough to wet the tool with water or oil, so did it dry, and wore a handkerchief, bandit style, to keep from breathing the cloud of glass dust. From this start I progressed to a portable dentist's drill, using tiny diamond-coated wheels to engrave line drawings on vases (usually for wedding gifts). I call this my "diamond period," which lasted for more than 20 years. All these pieces were done dry, wearing my "bandit's mask." Without cooling water or oil, tools would heat up and rapidly shed their coating of diamond particles. A valuable engraving point would last for about two vases.

For years, peering through my fog of dry glass dust, I tried to find out how fine intaglio engraving was done. Nobody would even answer my letters. Then, in August of 1966, the big breakthrough came. Mr. Joseph Cummings, one of America's finest stone wheel engravers, opened a shop in Scottsdale. After admiring the work in his shop window, and at the urging of my wife, I hesitantly walked into Cumming's Crystal Palace, and asked if he'd let me watch him work. Joe did far more than that. He showed me how to build my own stone wheel lathe, and taught me how to use it. He even gave me some stone wheels. When Joe saw some of the pieces I engraved, he said, "I have nothing against your cartoon-ing, but you should have been a crystal engraver." "I know it's a little late," I told him, "But that is what I am going to become."