My first Magazine Sky & Telescope - 04.2019

astro-logbook in which I record key information from my observations, imaging, and magazine perusal, and this issue proved to be a fount of such information. Bravo to your staff! Frank Puzycki Long Valley, New Jersey Adieu to Sue I was sad to read that Sue French is retiring from her column in your maga- zine. I remember that when it debuted, I was excited to see a column written by a woman. I had started subscribing to Sky & Telescope as a teenager in 1980 when the only women I saw in the magazine were models in the advertisements. But I’ve always thought S&T does a great job being inclusive and appreciate that you use gender-neutral language. And of course I was thrilled when Camille Carlisle and Monica Young began writ- ing columns and became editors. Thank you, Sue, for your wit and inspiration, for information about the objects to be viewed, and for point- ing me to many deep-sky objects that I looked for with my Orion 6-inch Dob. Caroline “Siffy” Torkildson Grand Marais, Minnesota Lost Kingdom Re “The Great American Lunar Eclipse” (S&T: Jan. 2019), speciﬁ cally the map on page 19: I’m sure you must be as bored as we Brits with all the nonsense about us leaving the European Union, but it’s only the EU we’re leaving, not the Earth nor even our current location on it. So, please, make sure you use a map which shows the British Isles (a small group of islands off the north coast of France) for your future lunar eclipse paths and timings. This isn’t the ﬁ rst time you Yanks have “disappeared” your mother country, and whilst we may be 1969 1994 Brian Martindale Ledbury, United Kingdom “ Peter Tyson replies: We’d like to say we knew clouds would cover the entire archipelago on eclipse day, so why disappoint potential viewers? The truth is, the British Isles somehow went missing from that map, and we didn’t catch it . Apologies from our side of the pond. FOR THE RECORD • In the lunar eclipse table (S&T: Jan. 2019, pp. 20–21), the entry for Total Eclipse Ends in the Eastern Standard Time zone should be 12:44 a.m. • On the 2019 Skygazer’s Almanac 40° North version, the hours from 5:00 p.m. to midnight on the timeline at the top should be labeled “Evening.” SUBMISSIONS: Write to Sky & Telescope, 90 Sherman St., Cambridge, MA 02140-3264, U.S.A. or email: letters@ skyandtelescope.com. Please limit your comments to 250 words; letters may be edited for brevity and clarity. 75, 50 & 25 YEARS AGO by Roger W. Sinnott 1944 small, we are not insigniﬁ cant, particu- larly in astronomical terms. º April 1944 Maksutov Scope “In the Moscow News of September 11th and 22nd, 1943, [we read:] A new invention, not generally known as yet, will be the subject of a paper by Profes- sor D. Maksutov. This scientist has designed a new type of reflector telescope with a correction lens, which, according to [conference organizer A. A.] Mikhailov, will effect a revolution in astronomi- cal optics. Thanks to it, telescope lengths may now be reduced nearly eight times. Moreover, the quality of the images is even improved. “The reflectors proposed by Professor Maksutov are also said to be easier to produce than exist- ing ones.” These claims weren’t too exaggerated, at least for small apertures. Soon after the war, Maksutov’s design appeared in the popular 3.5-inch Questar, and in 1956 a Maksutov craze took hold among amateur telescope mak- ers. One of their mentors, John Gregory, engineered the 22-inch Maksutov at the Stamford Observa- tory in Connecticut. º April 1969 Pulsar Flashes “One of the most important events in recent astronomy has been the discovery of strong pulses of light coming from the pulsating radio source NP 0532 inside the Crab nebula. . . . At Lick Observatory in California, J. S. Miller and E. J. Wampler carried out special observations on the evening of February 3rd to deter- mine more accurately the position of the optical flashes. At the coudé focus of the 120-inch reflector, a Westinghouse television camera used an image intensifier coupled to an SEC camera tube. . . . “In all, 46 photographs were obtained from the video tape, which confirm that the southwest star of the double is in fact the seat of the light flashes.” Back in the 1960s, a secondary electron conduction tube and TV camera were a small step on the road to the CCD imagers of today. º April 1994 Hubble’s Fix “When space shuttle Endeavour touched down at the Kennedy Space Center in pre- dawn darkness last December 13th, astronomers . . . had no idea whether the corrective optics installed to sharpen the telescope’s vision actually worked. . . . “The suspense finally ended on January 13th, when the first corrected images from Hubble were unveiled at a crowded press conference held at NASA’s God- dard Space Flight Center. . . . ‘The trouble with Hubble is over!’ [Maryland senator Barbara] Mikulski declared. ‘Now we know that NASA has the right stuff.’ . . . These words rang especially sweet coming from her. In June 1990, upon learning that Hubble couldn’t be focused properly because of a manufactur- ing defect, Mikulski had . . . cast grave doubts on the future of space astronomy at NASA.” sk yandtele scope.com • A PR I L 2 019 7

My first Magazine Sky & Telescope - 04.2019 | Page 9