Amateur Astronomy

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(PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 4 AND 5) As the moon sets and the stars of the constellations Scorpius and Libra emerge, members of the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association observe the display from Vega-Bray Observatory near Benson.

(LEFT) The spectacle of the crescent moon in a darkening sky inspires the club members to attend their telescopes.

(ABOVE) A composite image shows a Perseid meteor streaking through the star-filled sky above a silhouetted desert near Tucson.

(RIGHT) Amateur astronomer Don Wrigley gets more than an eyeful of moonlight, focused by his eight-inch f/15 refractor, during a "star party" in the desert near Florence Junction.

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Society, the state's oldest club, agrees. "People can come to a meeting or a star party, look through other people's telescopes, and ask questions," says Staats.

These are not 'party' parties. They are, rather, part swap meet, part seminar. All the clubs run them, generally away from city glare and during the dark of the moon.

One trait characterizes club members almost to a person. They are virtually missionary in their zeal to attract everyone else to the thrills of stargazing. Because of that, they will, at the drop of an invitation, appear with their telescopes in shopping malls, at schools, before Scout troops, and the like. Even from a brightly illuminated mall, one can observe at a minimum a planet or two, the moon, and some bright stars.

Many members share at least one other similarity. They became captivated by the cosmos as preteens.

When he was a sixth-grader in Abilene, Kansas, Robert Dahl chanced to spot a feathery blur in the luminous vault overhead. Curious, he borrowed his father's binoculars for a better view of what he later learned was a star cluster. He looked up the cluster on a star chart. And then, really excited, he began pursuing other objects in space. That Christmas he got a three-inch telescope and what would become a consuming pastime.

"Once you memorize about 20 constellation shapes, you can navigate your way across the sky," he says.

David Levy, the Tucson comet man, grew up in Montreal. He was 12 when he fell from his bicycle and broke an arm. While he recuperated, a cousin gave him an astronomy book, and he was hooked. "I decided immediately I would become a writer and an astronomer."

He did become a writer on astronomy and a sort of semipro astronomer. He has authored nine books, including a biography of Clyde Tombaugh, who, although he later became degreed, was an amateur in 1930 when he discovered the planet Pluto at Flagstaff's Lowell Observatory.

Leon Knott grew up on the Kentucky farm his parents still work. Summers, he slept outdoors, the brilliant tapestry above lulling him to sleep and igniting his imagination. He was a third-grader when he, like Dahl, received a three-inch telescope for Christmas. "I've never been able to stop looking up," he says.

One might ask why, if these people are so enamored of the night sky, they did not turn professional. Levy concedes he was never very skilled in the required math. Dahl says, "This sounds crass, but it was money." He found that in general engineers make more than degreed astronomers.

He gives a second explanation, however, one you hear from most amateurs. To them, the excitement is their ability to look directly at the wonders of the universe, whenever they wish, at their own time and place. Modern professionals seldom do that.

The image of an astronomer alone atop a chill, dark mountain, one eye clamped to an eyepiece, is almost passé. Today most large telescopes don't have eyepieces. Electronic equipment performs the observations, digitizing the information collected. A few astronomers sit at their own computer terminals to operate telescopes half a continent away.

Nonetheless amateur astronomers contribute more to the profession than is true with other sciences. A third of all new comets, for example, along with many previously unknown asteroids and the erupting stars called novas have been found by volunteers.

When such phenomena are disclosed, the major observatories often turn their telescopes toward them, to confirm their existence and perhaps learn more about them. Meanwhile the professionals keep busy with what they consider more fundamental mysteries, such as how creation came about and what the ultimate fate of the universe might be.

Comets appeal particularly to unpaid researchers in part because comets are the only astronomical bodies named after their discoverers. Comets are often located at about the same time by two or more hunters.

David Levy's triumphs in this endeavor turned out to be especially dramatic since it took him 19 years to encounter his first new comet in November of 1984. He can even tell you precisely how long he had patrolled the firmament by then: 917 hours, 28 minutes. With some understatement, he allows: "It does take patience."

Clouds shrouded Tucson that fateful November night when he joined his dinner date at a Chinese restaurant. When the overcast broke, his date, Lonny Baker, expected to be abandoned at the table. He assured her they would finish their meal first. They did, and then he went home to his backyard telescopes.

He uses two. Because it provides a wider field, he scans the sky with a six-inch reflector. For magnification, he switches to a 16-inch.

Later that night, Baker phoned to ask if Levy had found a comet for her. When he said he had, it took considerable explanation to convince her he wasn't joking.

Five comets he had detected by himself at the end of 1993 bear Levy's name. Fourteen more carry his name hyphenated with those of people with whom he shared the revelations. In the annals of comet tracking, no one has found more than the 30 of Carolyn Shoemaker, whose degree is in education and political science. Levy, with 19, ranks fourth in the all-time record books.

In 1972 Eugene Shoemaker, a pioneering astrogeologist in Flagstaff, began a

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photographic pursuit of potentially disas-trous asteroids, those with orbits that inter-sect that of the Earth. His tool is an 18-inch telescope on Mount Palomar, near San Diego. Around 1981 he taught his wife, Carolyn, how to spot those intruders, and she has worked with him ever since. Charting comets became a by-product of their quest. And since 1989 Levy has joined them in California for six week-long observing sessions a year.

Last May Levy disclosed to the Tucson club the team's unmasking of an exotic comet streaking on a collision course with Jupiter. Periodic Comet Shoemaker-Levy 1993e (the "e" indicates the year's fifth comet discovery) is odd, in part, because it is not one blip but some 20 mountain-size chunks lined up like a string of pearls. It should strike Jupiter in July of 1994.

If even a few of those mighty chunks slam into the planet's Earth-facing side, the explosion could unleash the celestial ex-travaganza of the century, showy even to naked eyes during daylight. But astron-omers predict the comet will crash into the opposite side and initiate at least short-term changes in the Jovian atmosphere. We won't know until an hour or two later, when the "far" side has spun around to face us.

Most amateurs must settle for the more mundane though still spectacular targets that come into focus during the star parties.

Typical was a party on a clear, star-span-gled night last June. A dozen SAC members converged in a clearing amid creosote bushes, saguaros, and scraggly mesquites in the Buckeye Hills Recreation Area, a county park 45 miles west of Phoenix. In the coal-black darkness, perfect for observing, only a sliver of urban glow traced the eastern horizon above the metropolis.

Tom Browning, by day a computer programmer, and his dog, Clancy, were the first to arrive. By nightfall he had positioned his eight-inch reflector. Soon he threaded his way up to the constellation Scorpius and then to the Dumbbell, or M27.

By coincidence, only a few yards away, Grant Klassen, a technician at Intel, the microchip maker, also eyed the Dumbbell along with a heavenly host of other worlds. So did transportation planner Ethan Rauch. Save for an occasional muffled conversation, the night was as silent as it was black.

Occasionally the state's clubs merge for a single event, such as the SAC-sponsored Messier Marathon, named for an 18th-century French astronomer. Charles Messier searched for comets. To recognize them, he needed to distinguish them from other diffuse objects that, unlike comets, can regularly be seen in deep space. So he cataloged109 of those other objects, known to this day by their Messier numbers, i.e., M1 (the Crab Nebula), M2, and so on.Galaxies, clouds of gas and dust called nebulae, and globular clusters (such as Dahl's Omega Centauri) make up most of the list. And they encompass some of the most glorious sights in the heavens. Dahl calls them "the showpieces." Although globular, or galactic, clusters appear in small telescopes as tiny, hazy patches, they in fact are dense balls of thousands of an-cient stars that formed about the same time from a common source.

The goal of the Messier Marathon is to locate as many Messiers as possible in a sin-gle night. This unfolds in an all-night vigil in late March - the only time the positions of the Earth and the sun make it at least theoretically possible to see them all in one night. The 1993 winner, Paul Lind, a Phoenix electrical engineer, spotted 94 of the 110.A number of Arizonans have won lapel pins given by the national Astronomical League to those who catch a look at 400 of the objects John Herschel, the astronomer son of Sir William, the discoverer of Uranus, listed in an 1884 publication. That task takes several years.

Awards aside, most amateurs believe that what they see is sufficient reward. Scanning the astral beacons night after night bestows a special kinship with the stardust from which all life arose.

"There's a perspective," Dahl muses. "Human problems shrink into insignificance because you see yourself as a tiny speck in the universe.

"You feel sorry for people who never bother to look up at the sky. It's as if they belong to an ant hill, and they're just bustling around and interacting with other ants, never grasping the larger context of which they are only a small part."

Photo Workshop: Join night-sky photographer Frank Zullo and the Friends of Arizona Highways for the Superstitions on Horseback workshop-tour, April 13-16. "Shooting" the stars, planets, constellations, and other celestial wonders is all in a night's work for Zullo, who will share tips on astrophotography during an evening get-together. For details, contact the Friends' Travel Office, 271-5904. For other workshops and Scenic Tours, see page 45.

WHEN YOU GO

Following are some of Arizona's amateur astronomy clubs, monthly meeting times, places, and contacts: Coconino Astronomers: Second Wednesday of the month; U.S. Geological Survey, 2255 N. Gemini Drive, Flagstaff; Ralph Aeschliman, (602) 556-7354.

East Valley Astronomy Club: Wednesday nearest full moon; Scottsdale Community College; Ted Heckens, (602) 827-1524.

Huachuca Astronomy Club: First Sunday of the month; Sierra Vista Senior Center; Ray Perger, (602) 458-9774.

Phoenix Astronomical Society: Third Thursday of the month; Brophy College Preparatory; Andy Castillo, (602) 839-4499.

Prescott Astronomy Club: Saturday nearest new moon; in members' homes; Robert Gaul, (602) 445-4325.

Saguaro Astronomy Club: Friday nearest full moon; Grand Canyon University, Phoenix; Robert Dahl, (602) 582-5526.

Sonora Astronomical Society: Second Tuesday of the month, September through May; Green Valley; J.R. Andress, (602) 625-8324.

Sun City West Astronomy Club: Irregularly; R.H. Johnson Lecture Hall; Jim Crisman, (602) 584-0896.

Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association: First Friday of the month; UofA Steward Observatory; Dean Ketelson, (602) 293-2855.