By David Levy Long, long ago, when I was as student at Acadia University in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, we studied the poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson. The English 360 course was taught by one of my favorite professors, Roger Lewis. Tennyson remains one of the truly great English poets, and even in his lifetime he knew that. In 1850, upon...
By David Levy Young Stephen was sitting at his desk in school, feeling bored. As he sat, he thought of the beagle, named Clipper, that his parents bought him. It was time for Clipper to take young Stephen on a tour through the night sky. On command Clipper appeared and said, “Tonight I will have you meet the Moon, and a new star.” “A brand-new...
By David Levy Since early in the last century, astronomers dreamed of the clear sky over California as a place to unlock our imaginations and study the Universe. In 1917, the 100-inch Hooker telescope was opened to the poetry of Alfred Noyes, who wrote: We creep to power by inches … even to-night Our own old sixty has its work to do; And now our...
By David Levy About a year ago, in this column, I wrote about the final Adirondack Astronomy Retreat (AAR) that Wendee and I held in the Adirondack Mountains near Lewis, New York. We had a special program with lectures, a banquet featuring, among other VIPs, my brother Gerry and his partner Duane, and President John Ettling of SUNY Plattsburgh. ...
By David Levy There are so many good reasons for acquiring an interest in the night sky. Mine wasn’t one of them. It turns out that I was extraordinarily shy as a child and had few friends. One July evening, at Twin Lake Camp in Vermont while walking with my bunkmates from a July 4th celebration, I happened to be looking up at the night sky...
By David Levy On Friday, June 14, my latest book, my autobiography entitled A Nightwatchman’s Journey: The Road not Taken, was launched at the Royal Astronomical Society’s General Assembly in Toronto. It is a book I have been working on for almost a decade, and it is the story of my life. The book begins in medias res, in the midst of a suicide...
By David Levy Of all the programs that Wendee and I enjoy watching on our television set, the game show Jeopardy is one of our favorites. For a half hour each day, Wendee and I play along as the three contestants try to respond correctly to host Alex Trebek’s clues. In our tradition, if Wendee or I get a question answered, we applaud each other...
By David Levy As the world prepared for war in 1939, a group of physicists was studying how to reproduce the behavior of a star on Earth: To split an atom, either quietly to provide a virtually unlimited source of power, or explosively to create a weapon of mass destruction. Worried that the Germans might develop an atomic bomb first...
By David Levy During our monthly star nights at our neighborhood Corona Foothills Middle School, I sit down on a chair near the telescope to assist with the observing. The students attending are well behaved no matter their level of interest. Some of the kids are there just for the evening’s assignment. But occasionally one student or two will sit...
By David H. Levy If you have read this column more than once, you probably are not too surprised to understand that I love comets. Comets are a part of me, a part of who I am. But I had to wait a while before I saw my first comet. I was already 17 years old and had been interested in the sky for a number of years. When I learned that the two young...
