Amateur Stargazers

To one group in the U.S. this week the wartime dimout on the East Coast is a pleasant necessity. They are the seaboard members of the informal fellowship of amateur astronomers. All over the U.S., through handmade telescopes mounted in attics, haylofts, garages, cornfields, hilltops, these sidereal sightseers lift up their eyes on cloudless nights to peer at the stars. Until the dimout their stargazing was hampered by the electric corona (newspapers now call it "lume") that glares on the sky above brightly lit towns. Now, with lights out or dimmed, amateur astronomers can see new hundreds of feeble stars.

Sky Patrol. Amateurs make a small but worth-while contribution to the science of astronomy. The 400 professional stargazers in the U.S. have their eyes full; their research is mapped out for months ahead, with no time to watch the skies for unexpected phenomena. So many an amateur is organized for celestial sentry duty.

Busiest group is the American Association of Variable Star Observers, who report their findings to the Harvard Observatory. Variable stars are distant suns which flare up, wane, flare up again with a mysteriously pulsating energy. Says one amateur observer: "Once you've watched a variable star in action, you're never the same again. It's like having your finger on the pulse of the universe." Variable stars (which include the Pole Star) pulsate, and nobody knows why or how, except that their behavior probably involves enormous transformations of matter into energy.

Amateurs also watch for novae--stars which inexplicably burst into brilliance, then subside. If a nova searcher sees a strange new star, he telegraphs its location to a major observatory.

Cornfield Observatories. One outstanding amateur astronomer is Leslie Peltier, an Ohio draftsman, whose little observatory stands in his father's cornfield. He is such an able observer that professionals look to him as the No. 1 U.S. comet tailer, and both Harvard and Princeton have lent him instruments. Inspecting the whole sky piece by piece each month, Peltier has discovered seven comets, which are named after him.

Most famed of all amateur astronomers is Robert Raynolds McMath, 51, who spends as little time as possible as chairman of Detroit's Motors Metal Manufacturing Co., as much as possible in the elaborate McMath-Hulbert Observatory near Pontiac. Fifteen years ago, Engineer McMath built a small 4-inch telescope for his father, became so fascinated at his first view of Jupiter's satellites and the moon's mountains that he has been designing astronomical instruments ever since. He has made the world's best motion pictures of solar phenomena, and his films are now used in colleges throughout the world. His specialty is photographing the enormous storms and eruptions on the sun. By 1938 Amateur McMath had invested so much money in his observatory that taxes on it were becoming unbearable, so he deeded it to the University of Michigan, in return was made an un-salaried professor of astronomy.

Homemade Telescopes. Many amateur astronomers are not only celestial geographers; they are mechanics with a startling knowledge of optics. They have to be, because many amateurs (partly from thrift, partly from preference) construct their own telescopes. Some of them are extremely powerful. Nearly all are highly ingenious.

Many mountings of homemade telescopes are pieced together from the gleanings of junk yards. Clyde Tombaugh, the amateur who discovered the planet Pluto, made a telescope mount from an old cream separator. Nevertheless, most homemade telescopes look pretty good; however much junk they contain, they must be precision instruments. Several, in fact, are now in use at professional observatories.

The hardest job in constructing homemade telescopes is grinding the mirrors. These must be accurate to within 1/400,000 inch, and amateur telescopists regard opticians--who grind spectacle lenses to within only 1/10,000 inch--as crude workmen. To make a mirror, two flat slabs of glass are rubbed together off center with fine abrasives in between. Slowly a concave parabolic surface is formed on one slab, which is then coated with silver. The work is all done by hand; it is not considered sporting to use a grinding machine unless it too is homemade. The average homemade telescope represents 100 hours of work, $20 worth of materials.

Most amateur astronomers seem a little queer to the millions of people who seldom lift up their eyes from the grimy streets of the minor planet they live on. Nor can most amateurs explain why stargazing fascinates them. But Ferdinand Hartmann, an amateur who shares his findings on variable stars with the Harvard Observatory, has an answer: "It's like why does a person become religious."

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