Special Memorial Issue, 2005 RRiicchhaarrdd HH.. EEmmmmoonnss ((11991199--22000055)) AA CCeelleebbrraattiioonn

BY DAVE GILL

On Wednesday, June 29, Dave Ross called me and said, "A bright light has gone out in the firma- ment". The news was not unexpected. Dave had last visited with Dick on the previous Sunday and they knew he was near the end. Jeanne and Dave had started talking about the service for Dick. But for being expected, it was not any less of a loss. During the subsequent days as I thought about Dick, I felt that a special issue of HORIZON to memorialize Dick would be a fitting tribute from his friends in the Wilderness Center Astronomy Club. What you are reading is the result of that idea. I have gathered some articles I wrote about Dick over the years, especially the asteroid story, along with a collection of reminiscences that Dick was an infrequent participant in club events. His wrote for HORIZON in 1991 about some various age and interests kept him from coming to meet- aspects of his long astronomical career. And I ings regularly. In fact, Jeanne told me once, near- asked the membership to contribute their memo- ly 20 years ago, that Dick was not much of a join- ries and thoughts of Dick. Jeanne Bishop, Dick's er - he tended to avoid astronomy clubs. But the daughter, supplied me with many photos and a fact that he decided to join our group and partici- great deal of fascinating correspondence and other pate at all was a tribute to the quality of the club material that Dick had kept. This has helped me to we have and the work we do. So I always took sketch in many more details about Dick that I had Dick's presence and interest as a high compliment. not known or only vaguely knew about. I've used this information to paint some biographical detail But I hope in this tribute issue that you will about this remarkable man. learn more about Dick's life and his contribution to astronomy education and amateur astronomy in As a caution to the reader, I have chosen to this area. I don't think it is too much of a stretch reveal to you the tapestry of Dick Emmons's life to call Dick our "godfather". I believe he was a through several threads that ran through it. There founder of the Astronomy Club of Akron. His edu- will be repetition in the various articles. Some cational efforts in Stark County showed the way for events or accomplishments in his life transcended future generations. His North Canton Planetarium several areas, and are discussed from different (a.k.a. "Star Barn") showed that there was a real angles in various pieces. need for quality astronomical instruction and it The question, for some of you who never got to laid the groundwork for the later and larger know Dick, might be "Why are we doing this?" Dick Hoover-Price Planetarium. I learned that as early 2 HORIZON

HORIZON is the quarterly newsletter of The Wilderness Center Astronomy Club.

Editor: ...... Dave Gill Contributors: ...... Dave Gill, Dave Ross, Bill Castro Layout ...... John Waechter WCAC Officers: President: ...... Bill Castro Vice President: ...... Fred Jarka Secretary: ...... Brian Gray Treasurer: ...... Dave Ross Planetarium Coordinator: . . . . Dave Ross Observatory Coordinator: . . . .Brian Gray Inreach: ...... Dave Gill Education Outreach: . . . . John Waechter WebMaster: ...... Bill Castro as the early 1950s he was "stirring the pot" with WCAC Address: local movers and shakers to fund a larger planetar- ium. I also learned that it was a relationship P.O. Box 202 between Dick and E. A. Heald, of the Stark County Wilmot, Ohio 44689-0202 Historical Society that put the actual wheels in Web Site: http://www.twcac.org motion for the facility that would become the Hoover-Price Planetarium. Hoover-Price is where I got my first serious instruction at the hands of Jane him even more - if that is possible. So, I hope all Mahoney and Dave Bertsch. And from those seeds of you will enjoy this glimpse into the life and sprung the inspiration that created what we are accomplishments of Prof. Richard H. Emmons. doing now at The Wilderness Center. For decades, And in knowing him better, and remembering him, Dick was "Mr. Astronomy" - the person the local we help him live on. media turned to for accurate astronomical infor- I'll close this introduction with this little quote mation. Today, with the Internet, that need is I found from Dick himself. The time was 1950, and somewhat reduced. But we still get called on for he had found himself between jobs. The Kent State thoughts about current events in the sky. And we University Canton Branch was closing and he try to uphold Dick's standards of conveying the needed a job. He was passionate about teaching - wonder and the facts at the same time. I think this first experience at KSUCB hooked him Those of you who ever observed with Dick or for life. He wrote a letter to the director of the new talked with him about his observations knew that Morehead Planetarium in Chapel Hill, NC inquiring he set the bar quite high for detailed and accurate if there were any vacancies. With that character- observations and meticulous records. His passion istic extreme modesty, this is how Dick described was his satellites, but he also enjoyed many other himself to a prospective employer: kinds of observing. He was a discerning telescope "My background for such a position, I believe, user. If he bought a telescope and was not happy is adequate. My enthusiasm for teaching astron- with its optics, you could bet that it would go back omy is probably not surpassed by 100 people in and be made right. That was a tremendous asset this nation!" for us as members. Several of us have scopes we bought from Dick over the years - and if Dick said Yes. That summed Dick up quite well. Modest it was a good scope, it was a good scope. to a fault, but honest. And discerning about the real crux of the issue. In the process of gathering together material for this issue, I learned a great deal more about Dick Dick, we were honored to call you our friend than I had known before. And I grew to admire and colleague. Thank you for your accomplish- ments. HORIZON 3 Richard H. Emmons: Opener of Doors

Everyone there understood, each in our own way, BY DAVE ROSS how well it applied to Dick. The late Robert Burnham, Jr. opened his three- In later life one of Dick Emmons' personal proj- volume Celestial Handbook with a reflection on ects was to oversee the publication of a manuscript the appeal of amateur astronomy. He wrote, left by his father, Harry H. Emmons, who was a "Considered as a collector of rare and precious respected Stark County attorney in the early part things, the amateur astronomer has a great of the last century. Dick was certainly proud to be advantage over amateurs in all other fields, who able to bring his father's manuscript to print back must usually content themselves with second and in 1996. Shortly after its publication Dick received third-rate specimens… In contrast, the amateur a letter of appreciation from the Ohio Bar astronomer has access at all times to the original Association, noting that the book preserves an objects of his study; the masterworks of the heav- interesting personal insight into the practice of the ens belong to him as much as to the great obser- profession during that period. vatories of the world." The book recounts his early years as a lawyer Sometimes when we're introducing someone to struggling to establish a practice, stories of some of Albireo for the first time we'll be heard asking his more interesting cases, the conflicts he had things like, "Do the two stars look the same? Are with certain political bosses and reflections on var- they the same color? What colors do you see?" I ious influences during his formative years. Chief try not to prejudice their response but eventually among the latter would be the writings of Ralph I'll say, "To me they look just like two little jewels, Waldo Emerson. two little blue and gold gems sparkling in the night." In the back of my mind is Burnham's defi- nition of the amateur astronomer. A collector of rare and precious jewels like those diamonds car- ried in the beak of the Swan or marking the foot of the Northern Cross. Better yet, because our tele- scopes are only tools of that "mystic harmony, link- ing sense to sound and sight" they enable us to give away our precious jewels without diminishing the treasury even the least little bit. At his birthday party back in late May, a month or so before his passing, I pulled out a little chest- nut by which to pay tribute to our friend and men- tor, Dick Emmons. It was a quote that runs in the same vein as Burnham's remark (it would be hard to prove, but I'd bet it probably inspired the latter) and I was pretty sure it would please Dick. It was a line by Emerson from his famous essay Nature, written in 1844. “He who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal man.” I put the quote in a little card but later was asked to read it for Dick and the assembly of neigh- bors and friends there in his living room. As I recall the moment I think I stumbled around adding a few words to underline the sentiment. Looking back, I doubt any explanation was needed. Harry Emmons’s book published by Dick in 1996 4 HORIZON

If Dick had a passion for astronomy, his father's was something more he could do help or inspire passion was Emerson, one of America's first great them. Now, with the scholarship being established literary and philosophical masters. In the 20's and through The Wilderness Center for area high 30's the elder Emmons lectured on the subject of school students and a special annual prize to be "Emerson, the American Confucius" and even pub- awarded through the Astronomical Society of the lished several collections of Emerson quotations Pacific, Dick's legacy will go on opening doors of on various subjects. In a little postscript to his opportunity and understanding about the wonders father's manuscript Dick noted a short list of some of the universe. of his father's favorite "Philosgrams", as he called And, I am proud to tell, one of his telescopes them. The list begins with the prophetic, "Hitch will go to Camp Wanake. There, for many sum- your wagon to a star." It ends with the transcen- mers to come, I hope young people will have a dental, "All that I have seen teaches me to trust the chance to be introduced to Albireo, the diamonds Creator for all I have not seen." carried in the beak of the Swan or marking the foot So, I was pretty sure those lines from Nature of the Northern Cross. And perhaps now and again would please Dick. And when his daughter, Jeanne they'll be introduced to "Mr. Astronomy" who Bishop, honored me with the nonetheless daunting hitched his wagon to a star and who was for his privilege of conducting his memorial service, I many friends a rich and royal man… hunted around in Emerson for some- thing else to help focus our thoughts in celebration of Dick's life. I found RELATED LINKS what I was looking for in this line… Copy of bulletin cover from Dick Emmons memorial service: "Be an opener of doors for such as http://www.twcac.org/onlinehorizon/horizonpdf/emmons_memorial.htm come after thee…" If Dick loved any enchantment Text of eulogy given by Dave Ross: more than the stars themselves it http://www.twcac.org/onlinehorizon/horizonpdf/emmons_eulogy.htm would have to be that of teaching about the stars. Of first note, within his family. How else did it come to pass that both his and Phyllis' off- spring became such accomplished teachers of astronomy as well? That may have been his most focused venue but the circle included his whole community over WHBC while still a teenager, and later in classes, telescope making workshops, observ- ing sessions, public and private plane- tarium programs, Moonwatch events, Scouting programs, and the list would go on. It extends to us in the WCAC where the "home planetarium" that he and son Tom fabricated opened the door for possibilities that are still unfolding for us. After retiring as an engineer, back in the early 80's I think, he even Planetarium programs at TWC got their start using the Emmons dared to try his hand as a Jr. High sci- "Home Planetarium" projector which was one of the club's first ence teacher in the public schools. projects in the early 1980's. It was retired when the refurbished Being not quite an angel but perhaps Viewlex projector was installed in the new Fred Silk Planetarium in part fool, that particular venture 2001. The facility and programs continue to grow. Bill Castro is proved mercifully brief! But even into shown here demonstrating our latest addition, a wireless video his final illness Dick was still thinking transmitter that allows us to display images from the Resitar 10" about young people and wished there telescope in the dome. And yes, those are two dust lanes in M31! HORIZON 5 Origins

From a wonderful grandfatherly letter he wrote to BY DAVE GILL his grandson Eric, he described the incident: A few years go in the pages of HORIZON, Gary "You may wonder what I was doing in my Liknes posed a fascinating question to all of us. early 'teen years that got me started in Astronomy How did your interest in astronomy begin? Gary - which you must know has been a life-long inter- wrote about his childhood and early memories. I est of mine. Well, I remember in June 1932, sitting took up the challenge and wrote some musings as on my front porch swing, reading a copy of well. But I was frustrated that I could not really Popular Science magazine. School was out for find where it started. Just a number of small inci- the spring, and it was a nice day, and I had noth- dents - little streams that eventually joined togeth- ing else to do. Here was this article on the recent er to become the lifelong passion I have had. discovery of a small mountain-sized asteroid that In discussing the origin of his own consuming had just whizzed past the Earth! They called it passion, Dick had no such problem. He remem- "1932 HA" and said it was "a mountain on the bered an incident that struck like a lightning bolt. loose". I thought, "WOW. Somebody ought to keep track of those things." Then I remembered that my dad had a little book on Astronomy in his bookcase. I immediately looked for and found it, and began reading it. It was Volume 1 of a ten volume set entitled The Science History of the Universe published by the Current Literature Publishing Company, New York, 1909. Volume 1 was entitled Astronomy, and was written by a Mr. Waldemar Kaempffert. I learned a lot from that book - including that I wanted to read a lot more on that subject. Soon I had read every Astronomy book in the Canton library, and often explained things that I had read to my dad during supper, who always seemed interested in listen- ing to me. I was hooked for life! Then I began giv- ing little talks to adult luncheon clubs (e.g. Rotary, Kiwanis, etc.). I also gave several 15- minute talks on the radio. By the time I was a senior in high school I had a monthly newspaper column on the subject! And I was paid by the inch! My columns continued for five years. I still have that first book, and I still have the scrapbook of my astronomy columns. I have been a lifelong member of the American Astronomical Society. So you see things that happen in your early teens can shape your life - and may also affect your children's lives. I got to know your grandmother Phyllis through Astronomy. She was interested in Astronomy before she heard of me, and first wrote a note to me to ask a question, "Where in the sky do I now look to see the planet Saturn?" Soon our common interest brought about a close friend- ship, and I helped advise her in grinding her own October, 1934. Dick holds a check for his first paid 4" diameter glass for her telescope. The rest is astronomy lecture history…." 6 HORIZON

Dick was born on May 29, 1919 during a total eclipse of the sun. He often liked to point out that fact, and that his natal eclipse was the one during which several scientific expeditions verified the predictions of the bending of starlight made by Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity. His father was a Canton attorney, Harry H. Emmons. Harry was an admirer of Ralph Waldo Emerson's writings, and later wrote a book about Emerson. So young Dick grew up hearing a lot of Emerson including the admonition to "Hitch your wagon to a star". After his lightning bolt experience with Popular Science, he persuaded his father to spend $30 of depression-era money for a two inch telescope - the top of the line in Sears' catalog. His object of "first light" on July 25, 1932 was Arcturus. Then he turned to Saturn and later the last quarter moon. His voracious reading and his new telescope began to earn young Dick a reputation. He was asked to speak at various clubs. The community was hungry for astronomy information. He spoke on WHBC radio. He began writing a monthly Dick & Phyllis Good visit Allegheny Observatory astronomy column in the local paper. Dick real- in Pittsburgh in 1937 ized that the public was hungry for astronomical knowledge, and he filled this gap. These early expe- Wesleyan, Kent State and the University of riences helped guide Dick's future career choices - Southern California getting his Bachelor's degree not to being a professional astronomer, but to in Education and later a Masters from Kent State as being a teacher. He went on to attend Ohio well.

Dick at Ohio Wesleyan University as a freshman, September 1937 HORIZON 7 Emmons Reflections - Away Back Then The telescope/lecture series attracted modest BY RICHARD H. EMMONS crowds each week and was judged a success. One Sunday evening I was there alone, making some Amateur's telescopes used to come in smaller personal observations with the telescope, and a car sizes. I remember my youthful grand scheme to came up the campus "Circle" at great speed and build what I then (more than 52 years ago) screeched to a stop nearest me, perhaps 50 yards believed would be the third largest telescope in away. The unknown driver threw open his door, Ohio -a 13 inch Newtonian reflector. So far as I the car's radio still blaring, and came running knew then the only larger telescopes in the state toward me, yelling, "Do you see it? Do you see it?" were the 69-inch at Perkins Observatory in "Do I see what", I called back, "The invaders from Delaware, and a large refractor at the University of Mars!" he fairly shouted while still approaching, "- Cincinnati. it's on the radio news." In designing the telescope I went against the My experience with the astronomically-naive traditional mirror thickness ratio and ordered a 13 public of that era allowed me to immediately grasp inch blank cut from 1 1/4 inch plate glass stock, an the true situation. I calmly told him that what he early "thin mirror", which I ground and figured to was hearing was just a radio play, and that there f/9 in the summer of 1938. I then built a square was nothing to be seen. But he insisted otherwise, trussed open tube telescope, a heavy pipe equato- and asked me to go over to the car with him to lis- rial fork mount, and a five-step stile observing plat- ten, which I did. We arrived at his car just as the form to reach the eyepiece, sometimes 10 feet radio announcer said they were switching to above the ground. Altogether, it was an impressive Washington for a special broadcast on the national sight, for that time. While construction was under emergency, and introduced "the Secretary of the way I obtained permission from the Board of Interior!" I listened for just a few minutes, and Trustees of Kent State University, and President again stated that this was a play - after which I left Carl Leebrick, to temporarily install the telescope the man at his car, probably still unconvinced, and on the front campus, midway between the old returned to continue my observations at the tele- Rockwell Library and the old training school, away scope. I remember dismissing the incident from from the trees, and where, it was agreed, I would my mind by shaking my head. provide observations and give open lectures for The next day, Halloween, I learned from the interested students and townspeople the first clear headlines in the morning newspaper that Orson evening each week during the Fall 1938 semester. Welles had upset the whole nation with his Mercury Radio Theater's presentation of "War of the Worlds!" At the end of that Fall semester I offered the 13 inch telescope as a free gift, no strings attached, to Kent State University. After consultations, however, Dr. Leebrick told me that the University would decline the offer since they would feel obligated to start a department of astronomy, which they did not want to do at that time. Word spread as to the availability of the telescope, and Attorney Weber, of Cleveland bought it from me and gave it to John Carroll University. Months later I read in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about the new John Carroll University Observatory and its 13 inch telescope. PS - Ten years later I built KSU a 12" tel- Dick and his homemade 13” Newtonian reflector escope that they still have. 8 HORIZON Emmons Reflections - Look! Up in the Sky! flying object" or, UFO. Have I ever seen a UFO? My BY RICHARD H. EMMONS answer (tongue in-cheek) is a qualified 'yes" - two visual sightings that were, very briefly, unidenti- I first heard the term "flying saucer" from one of fied. The first remained a puzzle for several long my astronomy students back in early 1950. He had seconds, the other for about an hour. been reading about them in a magazine called True, and he showed me a copy. I skimmed One evening while teaching constellations to a through one article which cited an observation by small group in North Canton, I directed their atten- an airline pilot, and then sampled another which tion to the star Arcturus - but there were two of suggested, some seven years before Sputnik I, that them! Both points of light were the same bright- another satellite of Earth was occupied by the ness and color and were only a few degrees apart. souls of the deceased. It seems that some people Now that started me thinking. feel a need to believe in something, especially It took only a second of time to decide which something new, that runs contrary to conventional point of light was the interloper based on its posi- science - perhaps thereby elevating themselves to tion. Another two seconds established that it was membership in an elite society of paradigm-chang- slowly moving. Aha! It can't be a nova, so it is ers like Copernicus and Einstein. Anyway, I made probably a high airplane or satellite. Which? some comments about being more discriminating Another second. No tell-tale blinking lights. No in assessing what we read or hear; that putting into noise. Then suddenly the object made an abrupt print that red is green doesn't make it true; and right angle jump to a parallel path; ergo it could not that scientific facts become established by the be an airplane or a satellite. What now? (long severe discipline of the scientific method. But pause) "Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still", so I finally invited the student to The only thing I could think of that would sat- come back for another discussion of "flying isfy the observations was a low altitude balloon saucers" when one had been put on display at the with an orange light on it, drifting with the wind Smithsonian! and subject to wind gusts. The weather bureau sometimes launched such balloons. I made a tele- The term "flying saucer" was then soon phone call to the weather bureau (while my group superceded by the more general term "unidentified waited).

Some of the Moonwatch crew with their telescopes HORIZON 9

Yes, the Akron-Canton weather station had bureau. They said they had received many phone launched a small balloon with an orange light on it calls about this object but that it was simply the about 20 minutes before my call, and it was last planet Venus. I tried to tell them that it was not seen by them slowly drifting to the southeast, and Venus, but I soon gave up. Now I remembered that thus over us. Problem solved. I had brought my binoculars with me and this was Then on March 16, 1958, the day before the my first opportunity to use them on this object. It Vanguard I satellite was launched, I started to drive was growing dark, but the object was still bright in back to my Orlando motel about sunset from Cape the low west. I took my binoculars out to the park- Canaveral. Through my windshield the western ing lot where I used the top of my rental car to sup- sky was very bright. There ahead of me, perhaps 20 port my arms while I brought the target into steady degrees above the horizon, was a bright star-like focus. Voila! Immediately I had the answer - the object. Although it was the color of the planet characteristic pear-shaped image of a stratospher- Venus it was much brighter than Venus ever gets, ic research balloon was unmistakable. I watched it perhaps -7 magnitude. Venus was then below the as it turned ashen gray and then faded out as the horizon, and I had seen it that very morning before sun set at its attitude. There is no doubt in my sunrise. The object just seemed to hang there as I mind that the balloon had something to do with drove along. I fully expected to see a marked the Vanguard launch early the next morning, but change in its position due to its own motion, or that the weather bureau itself was not involved. mine (parallax). After a while it seemed a little P.S. Then there was the wide angle star photo I lower, and I thought this might be due to the once took that, when developed, showed a crazy Earth's rotation. Was this a bright nova? zig-zag blurred trail among the stars. Firefly! Upon my arrival back at my Orlando motel room I immediately called the local weather

Emmons Reflections - On Palomar Mountain

BY RICHARD H. EMMONS

NASA's Mobile Observatory was equipped with a 24-inch Cassegrain telescope an a 4-axis tracking mount for recording multiband photometric observations of artificial satellites. In the summer of 1966, and again in the fall of 1968, the Mobile Observatory was stationed on Palomar Mountain in southern California, about an hour's walk south of the Hale 200-inch tel- escope. Our small group observed selected satellites for NASA almost every night during the two eight-week missions - per- haps few observers have spent more ~ nights on Palomar Mountain. Since I will be talking about satellite photometry at the July 26th WCAC meeting, I'll skip the technicalities here and try instead to capture a few personal kaleidoscopic memories, or essences from the enchanted mountain. For an interlude of about 50 years, from the mid-nine- teenth century until the turn of the twentieth century, Palomar was known as 'Smith Mountain" after the violent death of its first American settler. Newspapers of that period have called it "Mystery Mountain". Palomar Mountain rests on a block of pink granite 25 miles long, 6 miles wide, without fracture and apparently invulnera- ble to earthquakes although it is bracketed by faults. For five million years this mountain has been gradually rising above the coastal plain. Dick in front of the big dome on Polomar — 1959 10 HORIZON

astronomers - and the optics and structures as well. Now a sudden turn in the road and my next view was awesome. There was the mile-high wall of the Palomar escarpment. A mild expletive escaped my lips as I realized that I was about to climb that thing just to get to work tonight. And by a remarkable coincidence the car radio then began playing the then-popular rendition of Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66's "The Fool on the Hill". It seemed like it was meant for me. My climb became increasingly steep as I performed the many switchback hairpin turns and entered the National Forest. I crested the mountain just at sunset and followed the escarp- ment to my quarters at Skyline Lodge overlooking the distant Pacific Ocean. As I scheduled the night's observations and marked the star charts a real live Mickey Mouse with large round ears - similar to the one claimed by Walt Disney to be Mickey's inspiration - scampered up my desk leg and sat fearlessly regarding me from across my desk. It was growing dark as I walked over to our observatory, using my flashlight to check the path for rattlesnakes. Above, the Palomar night sky was fabulous. A deer sauntered by not ten feet away. Our crew opened the observatory, set the tele- scope's initial 4-axis positions and checked out the The 24” Mobile Photometric Observatory with instrumentation and recorders. I remember the Dick at the eyepiece — 1966 hissing sounds as the photomultiplier tubes were cryogenically cooled through out the night. In the early 1900's Prof. W.J. Hussey of Lick One night our target was a newly-launched Observatory investigated Palomar Mountain as a NASA satellite which needed to be sighted and possible site for a telescope subsequently located on measured as it first rose over our horizon, Because Mt. Wilson. He wrote, 'Nothing prepares one for the of the necessary zero-degree elevation, plus the 4- surprise of Palomar. There it stands a hanging garden axis orientation of the guiding telescope on the very above the arid lands - on one side a land as desolate top of the larger telescope, the usual A-frame ladder as Nevada, on the other side majestic slopes of pine." arrangement to reach the eyepiece met with inter- Leaving Pauma Valley in the late afternoon, a ference. So we quickly jerry-rigged a table sur- small road sign announced that I would be traveling mounted by a chair, which permitted me to stand on the famous "Highway to the Stars". The road wound the seat of the chair and thereby reach the guiding among the low foothills as the mountain loomed eyepiece. The brand new satellite was duly acquired ever larger ahead. Indeed, this was the path of the as it rose above the horizon and the data was obtained. But in attempting to come down from my lofty perch I fell first from the chair and then from the table, landing seated on the observatory deck. Needless to say I hurt my dignity a little. In keeping with the myth of the enchanted mountain, one night our 4-axis settings were inde- pendently re-set at three separate orientations and times to find coincidentally and unintentionally the very same star in our field of view. What is the chance of this happening? Closing the observatory, after the final multi- band photometric stellar calibrations just before dawn, didn't end all chores. Each day the data had to be calibrated, identified, packaged and shipped to NASA. Meanwhile outside my office window a crowd The NASA Mobile Observatory truck climbing the of frisky ground-squirrels cavorted as my desk work twisting road on Mt. Palomar went on. Then I went to bed at Skyline Lodge. HORIZON 11 Emmons Reflections - Under the Small Sky

BY RICHARD H. EMMONS

The first planetarium in this area, nearer than Cleveland or Pittsburgh, was made and used at the Canton Division of Kent State University while I was teaching there in 1949-50. From December through May about sixty live planetarium demonstrations were presented, with an estimated total attendance of 1500 young people from KSU and the Canton Public Schools. I remember one fourth grade teacher who brought her group to this planetarium. As usual, I adapted the sky show to the age/grade level of the audience and appropriately included the Big and Little Bears and their stories. But I also did Dick holding pointer under the dome of his KSUCB some serious teaching, and discussed the depths planetarium ca. 1949. of space, miles in the millions, billions and tril- Note the skyline around the dome lions, distances in light-years, and then pointed out the Andromeda Galaxy. After the customary this little incident revealing. Apparently some planetarium dawn and sunrise there was a lively adults have great difficulty coping with astro- question period in which the fourth graders nomical ideas where some previously-held erro- eagerly participated. Then, while these little peo- neous ideas have to be unlearned. ple joyfully skipped out of the room, having obvi- My next planetarium experience was at the ously enjoyed themselves, their teacher (500-seat, Zeiss projector) Morehead Plane- approached me as though she was in a state of tarium of the University of North Carolina at shock! "Oh Mr. Emmons," she implores, "Do you Chapel Hill, where I was under contract briefly think it right to subject these young minds to as Program Chairman and Head Lecturer. But these overwhelming thoughts?" But like water soon I opted to return to Ohio and aerospace running off a duck's back, these kids were not at engineering. Not least among my reasons for this all overwhelmed. But their teacher was! I found change was my growing conviction that a small planetarium could prove more feasible than a large planetarium - both educationally and eco- nomically. In 1953 at North Canton I started my small "Star Barn" planetarium as a hobby and side-line. There I first trained and then employed local high-school students to conduct my tape-record- ed programs while I was earning my living in aerospace engineering. Over a period of ten years some 20,000 persons attended these plan- etarium demonstrations -some groups from as far away as Akron, Alliance, Massillon and New Philadelphia. As in most planetariums, "The Christmas Star" program was an annual attrac- tion, and I was able to offer, on tape, the same December lecture in the little "Star Barn" that I Dick behind the lecture console of the Morehead had given live at Morehead. (The Morehead Planetarium Planetarium has been called the 'Taj Mahal" of 12 HORIZON the southeastern United States.) The North Canton Planetarium was pictured and described in Sky and Telescope magazine, (March, 1956, pg. 214). The May 1956 issue of The Astronomical Journal, pp 176-177, presented an abstract of my paper on The North Canton Planetarium which I gave before the American Astronomical Society meeting at The Ohio State University. (Armand Spitz of Spitz Planetarium fame was in the audience.) I closed the North Canton Planetarium in 1963 upon the completion of the Hoover-Price Planetarium. In the late 1970's and early 1980's my son Tom and I made and sold ten similar planetarium projectors, including ones for England, Texas, Kansas, Minnesota, several in Iowa, and the most recent for Ohio's Wilderness The Donner Rd. North Canton Planetarium Center. It has all been fun.

Professor Richard Emmons - Teacher

Popular Science about an earth-crossing asteroid BY DAVE GILL the size of a mountain. He decided, "Someone ought to be keeping track of those…" And he did. We can talk about many aspects of Dick's life, He read everything he could on astronomy, and by but his real passion was as a teacher. He taught 1935 at the age of 16, he was getting paid for giving formally in the college classroom. He taught both astronomy talks around Canton, and writing an formally and informally under the small sky of the astronomy column for the Repository. planetarium. He taught through his professional- ism in his observing. And he taught by how he While in college he often did public observing lived his life. at the school and here in Canton at the McKinley Monument. His own reflections on this subject are Dick often told the story of how he became elsewhere in this memorial issue. hooked on astronomy by way of a 1932 article in After the War, he came back to the area with his wife and daughter. The young men coming back from war needed an education. Kent State University set up a branch campus in Canton for night school. Dick began teaching there in about 1946. He taught physics and astronomy. It was here; in the Lehman High School building that Dick made his first planetarium. The dome was a modified silo dome. Dick drilled out the star ball himself. He used the design and construction of the planetarium as a learning experience for his students as well. The whole project ended up as a Masters thesis for Dick at Kent State. He started an astronomy club at the Canton branch, and he was well known and highly respected for his work there. Students under the dome of the original KSUCB In a report he wrote about the extracurricular planetarium classroom astronomy activities at KSUCB, he wrote: HORIZON 13 was a fantastic opportunity to get back into teach- ing and under a somewhat larger small sky. Unfortunately, fate dealt him a cruel blow. His father passed away in 1953, and Dick felt com- pelled to return to the Canton area to take care of his mother. Luckily his house had not yet sold, so he came back, Goodyear Aircraft Corp. gladly hired him back, and his old life resumed. (Please note some additional discussion of this juncture in Dick's life in the article “Dick Emmons - Planetarian” in this issue). But he still had the itch to teach. He remem- bered the classroom planetarium. He wanted to explore what could be done with a small planetari- um. He had a shot with a wonderful instrument in a lavishly appointed facility in North Carolina. Now he was going to concentrate on the educa- tional basics. One of Dick’s KSUCB students with her telescope project He resurrected his classroom planetarium in the detached garage behind his home in North "The extra-curricular astronomy activity at Canton. He called it the Star Barn - later more for- the Canton division of the Kent State University mally, the North Canton Planetarium. His wife was an outgrowth of the belief held by one faculty Phyllis sewed a dome over a wire frame that Dick member that astronomy offered wide transfer of constructed. He added equipment - a slide projec- training opportunities seldom recognized, and tor and a tape recorder were essential. He got high that the natural appeal of the subject might pro- school students to work for him, training them to vide an excellent basis for stimulating intellectu- give programs to his taped narration. This way he al maturation… Accordingly this faculty member encouraged informal meetings in which various interesting astronomical topics were discussed… Almost a year later… students formed the KSUC Astronomy Club… Thereafter most of the astrono- my activity was carried out in the name of this organization, but it should be recorded that the faculty sponsor developed interest wherever he found it… regardless of affiliations." The Canton branch closed suddenly in about 1950 when the voters of Canton turned down a tax levy to support it. I believe it was at that point when Dick went back into the engineering profes- sion he had started during the war. But in those few years at Canton, he had made a name and rep- utation for himself. The planetarium field, as we know it today was just getting off the ground. The first planetaria in the US were built in the 1930's, and there were still just a few in major cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles. The age of the small school planetarium had not yet begun, though Dick had blazed a path for it. Dick got the opportunity in 1952-1953 to go to a new major planetarium, the Morehead Plane- tarium in Chapel Hill, NC as education director. It Dick with 12” scope built by KSUCB Astronomy Club 14 HORIZON

could serve the needs of school groups while he worked at Goodyear. School busses would pull up bringing young people to experience the night sky in a con- verted garage in North Canton - hardly an idyllic setting. During a time when astronomy education had nearly disappeared from school curricula, he provided a bridge. And after Sputnik, when science education became a national priority Dick was ready to answer the call. He also put his considerable teaching skills and passion to work in training observers for the Moonwatch satellite observation program. He developed observing trainers and adapted his planetari- um to the task of simulating satel- Dick teaching Moonwatch volunteers with celestial globe lites. He wrote a two-page article for Sky and Telescope that was published in nomical in the Stark County area. Through his February 1957 describing his training methods and own newspaper writing, radio appearances and planetarium alterations. reportorial contacts, Dick explained the astronom- ical phenomena going on in the sky. The He ran the "Star Barn" for about 10 years until Repository referred to him as "Mr. Astronomy". the Hoover-Price planetarium came along in 1963. When they needed a comment or explanation, he He could have kept going, I am sure, but being the was on the short list of contacts for reporters. gentleman, he did not want to compete with the new facility. He did have a hand in the design and Finally, he was a teacher to the end for those of specification of the new facility. us who knew him. I helped him submit several occultation reports. I never failed to be amazed at After the Star Barn closed, Dick focused his his professionalism in how he approached his efforts on his satellite-tracking project - both pro- fessionally and through the Smithsonian's "Moonwatch" program. But by 1970, Dick's chil- dren were grown. He decided to go back to his first love, teaching. He became an assistant professor at Kent State's Salem branch. He taught there till he retired in the early 1980's. He decided to recreate his classroom planetari- um at the Salem branch. At the same time, he and Tom decided to market them as small classroom units. It was one of these that The Wilderness Center ended up buying in 1984 and installing in the Interpretive Building. It was our introduction to Dick. We even had him give programs with it a few times - notably on Astronomy Day. I recall one of our members, who had seen several of us give programs before, went to one of Dick's program and reported "Boy, he's good!" Through the years, from the 1930's till recent- Dick with Darrell Romick and the satellite simulation ly, Dick was the voice of authority in matters astro- trainer they built — 1958 HORIZON 15

satellite appears to be stationary. So as the earth turns, the satellite will stay put and the stars will drift by. That is what makes these lit- tle devils fun to watch. If you know where to point, you can find the faint satellite appearing to "move" against the background. But you can watch it for quite a long time without ever nudging your telescope. Once you find one, it will appear in the same spot each night but 3 minutes and 56 seconds earlier each night - the difference between a solar and sidereal day. Dick had a small flock of them that he regu- Dick at console of his new planetarium at KSU Salem larly watched. He kept his notes on deviations Branch, 1971 in their timing based on small changes in their orbits. One time as I was visiting him (in 2001), observations. He knew how to reduce data. He he was showing me a new 10" telescope resid- knew his reaction times. I just helped him with the ing in his garage. He bought the 10" because computer technology! But he set a high bar for the rest of us. it allowed him to see about a half a magnitude fainter in his light polluted North Canton skies. Even in the past few years, he was looking for He was referring to his garage as his "satellite opportunities to teach. I was surprised one day as observatory". I nodded my head and listened I was leaving the library in North Canton to see a dutifully until he dropped this next little gem on notice posted on the community bulletin board. me. He was particularly lamenting one loath- Dick was offering to give free astronomy observing some light in a neighbor's yard. But then he got sessions to SERIOUS students in the local schools a big grin on his face. He said, "This is why I on one-on-one basis at his home. I never found out if anyone took him up on this. call it my satellite observatory". He had a chalk outline on the garage floor where he would Finally, on the subject of teaching, here is a align the base of his new 10" telescope. Then piece that I read at Dick's memorial service. It is a he would point the telescope at a particular cleaned up version of the little thing I originally horizon angle - identified by a landmark across called "Lemonade" when I published it in HORIZON: the street - I don't recall if it was a utility pole, If you knew Dick Emmons, you know that he a chimney or what it was. But he knew… was one motivated, driven man. He loved his Then, he showed me a diagonally-placed astronomy - particularly satellites. This passion piece of duct tape on his garage wall. He said was with him for many years, and nearly to the "When I position the telescope on the floor in end, he still engaged in satellite observation this outline, and point it toward my landmark, every chance he got. He was particularly and move the telescope in elevation so that the enchanted with geostationary satellites - ones shadow of the finder telescope as cast by that which circle the earth in an orbit synchronized terrible yard light coincides with the duct tape, with the Earth's rotation. They are thus over my geostationaries are right in my field of view! the same spot on earth all the time. Over the It saves me a lot of time looking for the guide years Dick alerted us from time to time when a stars." geostationary would be near some easy target I about fell over. It was so clever… so so the less skilled among us (i.e. me) could resourceful… so… so Dick. Leave it to our find it. Particularly, Dick always sent predic- ever-resourceful friend to take a situation like a tions for a geostationary that liked to "cross" bad light in the spot he likes to observe, and the beautiful open star cluster M-11 in the fall. turn it into an advantage! Although Professor To observe these, you need a sophisticated Emmons had long since retired, he was still tracking platform called "earth". Your generic teaching us. telescope will track it just fine - recall that the 16 HORIZON Numbers expanding universe of galaxies was a new idea that BY DAVE GILL was just gaining traction. Amateur astronomy today differs greatly from So what did young astronomy students learn in how it was when Dick Emmons was growing up. school? Math. Lots of math. If you wanted to Today we have large aperture telescopes at our dis- point a telescope, you used setting circles. You had posal. Dobsonian mounts are "point and shoot" - to know how to set them. So you needed to learn you just point the scope and look for things. about right ascension and declination. About side- Computer-controlled telescopes like the LX-200 real time and hour angles. About the connection and ETX families require minimal technical knowl- between the clock and the sky. So even in intro edge to find the wonders of the universe. Line up astronomy courses, you got dipped into math. on a couple of stars, press a few buttons and you're Today I don't think many of us could define side- in business. Even armchair astronomers have the real time, let alone calculate with it. universe at their fingertips via the Internet. We get So the astronomy that Dick learned was based nearly concurrent views of Saturn and Mars from on calculation. He learned that he could make pre- our proxy explorer probes. We can share the won- dictions. What time the sun would rise. Where the der of exploring new worlds with no pain. planets would be on a given date. He learned that But in Dick's youth, things were different. Very from a few observations of a comet or asteroid, he different. After his epiphany about the earth- could calculate the orbit of that body, and predict crossing asteroid and that "someone ought to be where it would be. Dick fully grasped the power keeping track of these things", the astronomy that that mathematics gave him in understanding the Dick dove headlong into was very technical. When workings of the sky around him. That passion he was a college student, he built a 13" Newtonian never left him. While at Ohio Wesleyan he took reflector that was the third largest in Ohio at the and processed photos of the sun every clear day, time. It wouldn't even be the third largest in the then measured and reduced the heliocentric longi- WCAC today! Our knowledge of the solar system tudes and latitudes of sunspots. Because of his fas- was primitive by today's standards. Hubble's cination with calculation, he visited the US Naval Observatory almanac office and saw the people cal- culating ephemeredes using mechanical crank cal- culators and logarithms. But the atmosphere of the office convinced him that he did not want to be a professional calculator. After he and Phyllis married, he moved to Los Angeles to complete his education at the University of Southern California. At USC, one of his professors and mentors was Stanislaw Ulam, the Polish emigre mathematician. Ulam told Dick of an important secret project that he was involved in, and that he wanted Dick to come with him as an assistant. Dick declined because Ulam was being very vague, and Dick liked to make decisions with his eyes wide open. Of course, Ulam was a key figure in the Manhattan project at Los Alamos and later solved some of the fundamental problems with the hydrogen bomb that Teller is usually cred- ited with. But Dick was that good. He was there during the outbreak of WWII. He applied for a commission in the navy, but was tuned down. He continued his education and also started working in the aeronautical industry as a flight test engi- neer with Lockheed. During the war, the west coast was frequently Dick plotting satellite paths under a blackout. There was widespread fear after HORIZON 17

Pearl Harbor that the coast might be bombed. There was also an information blackout - weather forecasts were not publicized because they might aid the enemy in preparing an attack. At this time, Dick offered a number of west coast newspapers his services by providing calculated sunrise and sunset and twilight times. His logic was that under blackout conditions, folks needed this information to plan their activities. The papers declined, citing the government embargo on weather conditions. Dick logically argued back that the sunrise/set information was available to anyone - even the Japanese - with the ability to calculate. So there would be no harm in publishing it. He lost that battle. But once he came back to Ohio, his astron- omy club at Kent State Canton Branch provided Dick’s Akron-Canton Moonwatch Chapter observers those calculations to the Repository for several in the North Canton Planetarium years. By this time, Dick was also calculating orbits of planets so as to predict future positions. well as a number of others. He used his planetari- This is a good bit more involved - especially before um for training - teaching the constellations and calculators and computers became available. But the celestial sphere to his Moonwatchers. He Dick had procedures written up for each of the helped develop training methods to calibrate and planets. reduce reaction times He learned to reduce their data. He became an authority on satellite orbital When Dick started teaching at the Canton mechanics. Branch, he realized the value of the planetarium. Planetaria were new at that time - there were only One of Dick's favorite stories involved his a handful in the US. And these were large Zeiss observation of a newly launched satellite: installations - sky theaters. The planetarium as a I remember an observation I made before classroom tool had not yet come to be. But the dawn on the cold morning of February 18, 1959.. idea germinated in Dick's fertile brain. With the The evening before, I learned from my radio the help of his astronomy club students, he designed exact minute that Vanguard II had been and built his first planetarium. Again, recall that launched, and its initial direction out of Cape the celestial sphere was an important part of the Canaveral. The satellite's planned altitude and astronomy curriculum at the time. And there is no orbital inclination had been published earlier. I question that demonstrating the sphere by means used this information that evening to calculate, at of a planetarium is a very effective method of get- our kitchen table, using a slide-rule, where and ting these concepts across. when I would first be able to see it. Since As the time approached for the first artificial Vanguard II was a small satellite, I knew it would earth satellites to be launched, the Smithsonian require a telescope to be seen. It was about 5 a.m., Astrophysical Observatory set up a program called with the temperature hovering near zero, that I "Moonwatch". The purpose was to develop a net- saw it pass through the center of the field in my 8- work of observers to observe satellites as they inch telescope. As customary, I immediately sent a passed overhead. For Dick, this was a natural telegram to the Smithsonian reporting the time of opportunity. It involved observing, it involved cal- my observation to a tenth of a second, and the culations on the celestial sphere. It involved satellite's right ascension and declination. Then I reducing observations of an orbiting body to orbital shaved and rushed off to be at my desk at elements, and calculating sky positions from Goodyear on time. orbital elements. Plus, it gave him an opportunity That morning the Smithsonian telephoned me to teach serious students some serious astronomy. twice at work. The first call was to congratulate By this time, Dick had reincarnated his Kent me; they said that I was the first person in the State planetarium in his garage, as the North world to see Vanguard II in orbit. An hour later Canton Planetarium, or Star Barn. He used this as they called again-their computer staff now want- the nerve center of his Moonwatch program. A ed to know how I did it, since always before, the number of his coworkers from Goodyear first observations of a new U.S. satellite had Aircraft/Aerospace participated in the program, as depended on their own computer predictions. 18 HORIZON

When personal computers became available, Dick jumped in with both feet. He began develop- ing his own programs and writing his own code to reduce the work of hand calculations. When he died, Jeanne had the sad task of going through boxes and boxes of cassette tapes of his custom software - software that was unique, but probably not useful to anyone but Dick. I remember getting tables of predictions of geostationary satellite pas- sages through the open cluster M-11 that happened each fall. Dick also developed a program for calcu- lating helical risings of stars from different lati- tudes. When a new comet would appear, Dick would eagerly get the elements of its orbit and plot a path. Dick and his first home computer — 1985 Several times he sent me 3-D renderings of the orbit of a particularly interesting comet orbit - one ect that Dick had dreamed up. The object was to with a high inclination or some other peculiarity. weigh Saturn using a telescope and a stopwatch. He loved to visualize these things. He sketched out the technique and the mathemat- Dick had a unique opportunity when asteroid ics. It sounds like a thoroughly doable project - but 5391 Emmons was named for him. He had his own one requiring the observing acumen of someone space mountain to keep track of. And so he did. like Dick. He informed us of its next good opposition several Shortly after the first Hubble Deep Field photo years hence. He knew it would be faint. So he cal- came out in 1997, Dick sent me a copy of an arti- culated an ephemeris of it and plotted it on the cle from Physics Today that discussed the image. best star atlas he could - copies of the famous But he added his own touch to it. He noted that Bonner Durchmusterung atlas. Unfortunately, this the image showed at least 3000 galaxies down to involved having to precess the ephemeris from 30th magnitude in a 2.7 x 2.7 arcminute patch. Epoch 2000.0 to Epoch 1855.0, the epoch of the Assuming that the sky is homogeneous in distribu- atlas. This was a piece of cake for Dick. tion of galaxies, Dick calculated that there would Unfortunately, his pet rock was much too faint for be 350,000 galaxies lurking behind the moon. And the B-D plot to be very useful. We ended up mak- when Venus is at its closest, it hides 275 galaxies. ing custom charts with Guide 8.0 from Project Dick understood that reducing the universe to Pluto and plotting stars down to 17th magnitude. numbers is not an impersonal thing - often it can In reviewing many papers that Jeanne loaned inspire more wonder than the most beautiful pho- me, I ran across a remarkable little observing proj- tographs.

Dick Emmons - Planetarian I have not been able to trace Dick's first plane- BY DAVE GILL tarium exposure. Buhl Planetarium was opened in Pittsburgh in late 1939. He may have visited there. Many people who knew Dick for nothing else Chicago and Philadelphia also had early planetaria. knew him as a planetarian. He was a pioneer and After Dick and Phyllis married, they moved to Los innovator in the use of the planetarium for educa- Angeles and lived just a mile below and in sight of tion, and he gets little credit in the grand scheme it. It is likely that they attended shows there. because he was contemporaneous with Armand Spitz. Spitz was interested in making a business In 1947 Dick started teaching physics and out of his planetarium ideas. Dick was interested astronomy courses at the KSU Canton Branch. in teaching. But in this area, we certainly owe Dick discovered early on that teaching physical Dick a debt of gratitude. His stamp was on both concepts worked best with apparatus. His students the Hoover-Price planetarium and on the original gave him feedback to that effect. He was constant- planetarium at The Wilderness Center. ly running himself all over the school building try- HORIZON 19

program to simulate the current sky. He motorized the ball and used a slip ring apparatus to keep wires from twisting. The dome was made from a barn silo specially smoothed for the purpose. In this setting, Dick could use the planetarium in the course of his classes whenever the moment was appropriate. When the KSUCB closed up shop in 1950, Dick packed up the planetarium. He went in search of other teaching opportunities. But he ended up back in the engineering field. A little while later, however, one of his applications he had sent out bore fruit. In April, 1950 he had sent a letter to The original KSUCB planetarium instrument Morehead Planetarium in Chapel Hill, North ing to borrow apparatus. Eventually he made a plea Carolina applying for a staff position there. It sat for equipment for the physics courses. Although I in a file until August, 1952 when a vacancy opened do not know this for a fact, I suspect that Dick up and they offered Dick a position as Director of found the same thing with teaching astronomy. Programming, which he accepted. He moved to The learning of the celestial sphere was abstract Chapel Hill to develop programming for the major and three-dimensional - and I suspect that his Zeiss installation at Morehead. mind raced back to his visits to Griffith Fate intervened, however. His father died at Planetarium and the experience of seeing the sky Christmastime in 1952, and Dick felt a family obli- on the dome overhead. Also recall that this was gation to return to Canton to care for his mother. nearly 60 years ago and astronomy was taught in a Fortunately he had not sold his home yet or relo- very different fashion than it is today. cated Phyllis and the children. He returned to Dick had students that were interested in doing Goodyear Aerospace. But his heart was still in astronomy outside of class. He encouraged this. teaching and his experience with the planetarium He helped them build telescopes, and eventually in the classroom stayed with him. formed an astronomy club at the KSUCB that he In 1951 he had met Armand Spitz at an also nurtured along with many projects. In the American Astronomical Society meeting in spring of 1949 he took about 15 students to Buhl Cleveland and discussed Dick's thesis and his plan- Planetarium in Pittsburgh. This must have lit a fire etarium project. Spitz borrowed Dick's thesis and in Dick and his students because in his words, "Six wrote back to him: months later there was a small but effective plan- "you have done a superlative job and that etarium in use at the Canton Division, largely as you have expressed very satisfactorily, not only a result of interest stimulated on this field trip." the problems involved in setting up a planetari- Dick ended up using this experience as the topic um project, but you have gone directly to the core for his Masters Thesis. This was the beginning of Dick's love affair with small planetaria. As with everything else he did, he approached this project with enthusiasm, resourcefulness and professionalism. The star ball was an old earth globe drilled with approximately 500 stars - carefully chosen to best represent the star patterns in the real night sky. He drilled a series of larger holes at regular intervals along the ecliptic that could be fully or partially masked with opaque tape. A fully open hole could be the sun or full moon. A round mask partially occulting the hole could project various lunar phases. An opaque mask with a hole a little larger than a bright star hole could represent a planet. And these could be moved around the sky before the Grade school students visiting the KSUCB planetarium 20 HORIZON

of the educational and cultural Because he kept his "day job" advantages of such an activity at Goodyear, he had to develop in an educational institution… others to do the actual program- (you are) one who visualized ming. He wrote and recorded his and solved almost insuperable scripts. He trained several high problems in the interest of offer- school students to do the mechan- ing a worthwhile teaching ics of the programming. He adjunct." worked with the school to get It should be noted that Sptiz them excused for doing these pro- had developed a well-deserved grams. School groups would book reputation as an astronomy pop- programs in advance, and busses ularizer and public educator. He would pull up on Donner and let was at this time in the early out groups of students. Evening stages of starting up a business to programs would often be done by manufacture and sell a low-cost Dick himself for scout groups, (compared to Zeiss) planetarium civic and church groups. system suitable for schools and In an article he wrote in HORI- smaller institutions. Spitz saw Looking in the door of the “Star ZON (reproduced elsewhere in business opportunities. Dick was this memorial issue), Dick wrote Barn” North Canton planetarium a teacher at heart, and saw edu- about his transition from the "Taj cational opportunities, and wanted to explore Mahal" in Chapel Hill to the Star Barn: these. It was interesting that these two visionaries My next planetarium experience was at the were traveling down similar paths at the same (500-seat, Zeiss projector) Morehead Planetarium time. They would cross paths again. But their of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, fundamental make-ups led them from this point in where I was under contract briefly as Program different directions. Chairman and Head Lecturer. But soon I opted to When Dick moved back to the area, he pur- return to Ohio and aerospace engineering. Not chased a home at 313 Donner Rd in North Canton. least among my reasons for this change was my He had a vision, and wanted to continue to explore growing conviction that a small planetarium education with his planetarium. So he trans- could prove more feasible than a large planetari- formed his garage into a planetarium. He installed um - both educationally and economically. a 14' cloth dome inside of it. He resurrected his (Emphasis MINE - DPG). When I first read this, projector. He darkened the windows. He began to I was not aware of his father's passing. But it is evi- develop programs. At first this was called the "Star dent that Dick had multiple reasons for leaving Barn", later more formally, the "North Canton Morehead. Dick's brief experience with his KSUCB Planetarium". planetarium left a powerful impression on him, and he wanted to explore where that would take him. Dick wanted to sell the idea of small communi- ty planetaria like his. He wrote an article that appeared in the March, 1956 Sky & Telescope about the planetarium. He gave papers at plane- tarium conferences like Cranbrook in 1958. In that paper he wrote: Through the use of recorded commentary, the small planetarium becomes remarkably more practical, overcoming capacity limitations through virtually effortless repeat performances. As planetaria demonstrate inherent practicality, more of them will appear. The small planetarium and recorded commentary combine naturally to Under the dome of the North Canton planetarium form an audio-visual educational medium which can contribute greatly to fulfilling a recognized with a couple of Dick’s trained student presenters need for the dissemination of astronomical infor- HORIZON 21

and took care of ticket money. Jeanne was one of the North Canton students trained and excused for doing programs. I believe I read that she made a skyline cutout for the dome. Young Tom also must have learned much there. Jeanne went on to direct the Hoover-Price Planetarium and later to the Westlake School District planetarium, where she has been active in international planetarium activities. Tom has taught at Kent State's main campus and run their planetarium. Tom's daugh- ters Heather and Kristen both lectured summers at Hoover Price. When the movers and shakers in the Stark County Historical Society started seriously work- The North Canton planetarium instrument after the ing toward a permanent museum, they envisioned addition of the satellite motion simulator a planetarium in the facility. Ed Heald enlisted Dick as a consultant. As the planning evolved, mation. The need exists throughout the United Dick ended up specifying the equipment that States and the world, and far exceeds the number would be in the planetarium. When the new plan- of qualified planetarium lecturers. There should etarium, built with money from the Hoover Price be at least a small planetarium in service to every foundation was opened, Dick held the title of school system and community! “Planetarium Consultant” and developed and pre- sented programming until Jeanne could take over as director. Something that I did not know, despite being close to the Hoover Price Planetarium for many years, is that Dick was responsible for some significant customizations in the Hoover-Price A- 3P projector. The original star ball as purchased was capable of projecting over 1700 stars. Dick drilled over 1500 ADDITIONAL stars, allowing the instrument to project over 3000 stars. Apparently there were some other customizations that were not detailed, because for a number of years the Spitz technicians would refer to Dick to find out how he had done certain things to improve the instrument so that they could incorporate them as well. Tom Emmons installed the original sound Dick drilling holes in a star ball for a TSA Planetarium

Now there was a man with a vision! What Dick modestly failed to mention was that these commu- nity planetaria can succeed when they are driven by highly motivated and competent individuals- persons of passion. But these are, alas, too few. The North Canton Planetarium served over 20,000 visitors from 1953 - 1963, when it closed. It was the training and nerve center of the Akron- Canton Moonwatch section. Dick developed train- ing aids in his planetarium to serve this special need. And it served as the nurturing ground of what Dick affectionately called the "Emmons Planetarium Dynasty" You see, the North Canton Planetarium was a Dick adjusting the star ball of the projector at The family affair as well. Phyllis scheduled programs Wilderness Center — 1985 22 HORIZON

system, and Tom has continued to do much of the made a business venture, called TSA Services. maintenance on the facility to this day. They sold small planetaria like the one he used. Once Hoover-Price was open, Dick closed his His target audience was small colleges like his. Star Barn and sold the projector to the Richland Dick hand-drilled all the star balls. Tom built Astronomical Society in Mansfield. What ever much of the rest of the units. These are the same became of it, I do not know units that The Wilderness Center obtained in 1984 and ran until 1999. Our old Emmons/TSA plane- The teaching bug never left Dick, and decided tarium is now back in the Emmons family - Tom to go back into teaching, obtaining a position at bought it back from us when we installed the new KSU's Salem Branch in 1970. One of the first instrument in the Silk Planetarium. things he did was to build another planetarium. For the next 10+ years he taught at Salem, he used Dick crafted a total of 17 star balls in his "career" this planetarium in his classes. He and Tom also as father of small skies. Ours was number 12.

Dick Emmons - Consummate Observer In his first year of college at Ohio Wesleyan, he BY DAVE GILL did solar observing and data reduction, and also assisted Dr. Ernest Cherrington with guiding the In the field of observation, chance favors only 69" Perkins telescope for long, spectroscopic expo- the prepared mind. sures. - Louis Pasteur In the material that I looked through, the place No discussion of the legacy of Dick Emmons where I first get the sense of Dick's serious observ- can be complete without looking at his observa- ing acumen developing is when the Moonwatch tions. Dick understood that above all, astronomy program started. This program touched many of is an observational science. He took his observing Dick's passions. It involved mathematics and time seriously. He went prepared, made skilled spherical astronomy, orbital mechanics, observing, observations and knew how to reduce them to use- aerospace engineering, teaching, and he saw the ful data. And he took the time to get them in the value of the planetarium in all of this. It was like hands of those that could use the data. he was meant for this. But in addition to his personal observations of The Moonwatch Division of the Smithsonian things that mattered to Dick, he also knew the Astrophysical Observatory was created in 1956 as importance of getting other people to look through part of the Satellite Tracking Program established telescopes. He knew that a telescopic view of the to track and photograph the artificial earth satel- moon, Mars or Saturn could be a catalyst - a life- lites to be launched during the International changing experience. He never forgot that, and Geophysical Year, 1957-1958. The surprise launch always wanted to share the riches that the night of Sputnik in 1957 generated much enthusiasm for sky had bestowed upon him. the satellite program. Amateur astronomers, often supported by local businesses and schools, formed I have not been able to find much about Dick's groups of volunteers who manned rows of tele- observing passions in his youth. But his sharing of scopes searching for satellites. The Moonwatch the sky is well known. He writes about his time at Division directed and instructed the observers, Kent State in 1938. He installed his home-made loaned them equipment, and tabulated the data 13" f/9 reflector on campus and held free public collected. Scientists were named in other parts of observing nights on the first clear night of each the world to help establish Moonwatch teams in week. He also wrote of a night at the opposition of many foreign countries. Gradually many "teams" Mars in the summer of 1939 where he set up by came to be composed of a single observer, highly himself with his 4" refractor on top of the McKinley skilled in satellite tracking and often affiliated with Monument and had a crowd of over 1500 people a local observatory or university. Until its termina- that wrapped around the monument, down the tion in 1975, the Moonwatch Division coordinated steps and beyond. The session lasted past 1 a.m. HORIZON 23 this network of volunteers and amassed a total of what may have been the first official sighting of nearly 400,000 observations of satellites. an artificial satellite in the United States… Dick helped organize an Akron-Canton group. Can you feel the regret in Dick's writing here? They set up an observing site in Green Township, He kept active with the Moonwatch team. just north of the Akron-Canton Airport. In many Eventually they learned that observations could be of the photos from the Moonwatch project, we also made more informally - by individuals in their own see Darrell Romick - Dick's close friend and co- stations rather than with the group setting through worker from Goodyear Aircraft/Aerospace. They multiple sets of binoculars. set up a line of observing stations with binoculars pointed at different altitudes, all pointing north. Dick's satellite experience and his physics With the help of member and professional survey- knowledge led him to an important contribution to or David Wilson (father of WCAC's Dean Wilson), our knowledge of the near earth space environ- they laid out this meridian line and erected the ment. Echo I was a popular satellite for observers. poles that marked the observing site. Dick helped It was a 100-foot diameter aluminized Mylar bal- train the observers about the celestial sphere and loon. Its original mission was as a passive commu- the motions of satellites. He developed a training nications experiment - researchers bounced radio box to help the observers improve their reaction waves off of it. times. (Remember - most of this was going on At this point, there were many arguments BEFORE Sputnik. We take satellites for granted about the nature of the space environment in near today. But this was a new phenomenon they were earth orbit. Many thought that in addition to the planning to observe.) particle flux from the sun, it had many micromete- In his report titled, "Information Concerning ors that would pose a huge threat to spacecraft in the History of the Akron-Canton Satellite Tracking orbit. Dick credits "a few of us" at Goodyear Group", Dick wrote this: Aerospace with the idea that they could use Echo I as a cost-free probe of that environment. They The work of establishing the main station took many photos of the Echo I path across the was completed in February 1957 and a number of sky. The variation in brightness suggested that the practice sessions were held to train the observers. balloon was still highly reflective. But the data Reticles placed in the binoculars permitted timing were inconclusive. As Dick said, "We needed a star transits across the meridian for such prac- microscope that would reach over a distance of a tice. A public address system permitted voice thousand miles to see if Echo I's surface had announcements to the observers calling attention become rough or crazed". to the celestial objects predicted to be in their indi- vidual fields of view, which added considerable Dick then made the crucial realization - he interest to the practice sessions. needed to take accurate photometric data of the satellite and combine it with accurate observations Thus when Sputnik I was launched the team of position. He fabricated a simple hand-held pho- was instrumented and trained, but of course still tometer with a zero-power pointing device - the not experienced with all the subtle difficulties in same as the naked eye. He measured Echo I's observing actual satellites. A case in point is the brightness as recorded on the photometer into a failure or the group's founder and leader, Mr. tape recorder along with a time signal. He cali- Emmons, to immediately identify and obtain data brated the brightness readings against known on Sputnik I when he glimpsed it first on the bright stars to correct for atmospheric extinction. morning of October 13, 1957 during a full alert. He calculated the distance to the satellite at each The other observers, intent on their coverage of measurement point and normalized the data to a their assigned binocular fields of view, did not see uniform satellite distance. Sputnik I because it crossed their antemeridian fence in shadow. Emmons saw it for several sec- Dick knew that a smooth reflector, like a pol- onds by naked eye but made no voice announce- ished Mylar surface behaves differently than a ment from which the time could be obtained from rough reflecting surface - like the surface of the the running tape recorder; he simply was too moon. The moon's surface gets more reflective as astonished to be certain of the object's identity, it approaches full moon - that is why the full moon specially since it had been expected that artificial seems so blindingly bright compared to a gibbous satellites would be seen and timed only by the for- moon. A polished or specular reflector does not mal Moonwatch fence technique. Thus was lost behave this way - the brightness of reflected light 24 HORIZON off of a polished surface stays constant as it email that he sent to several friends in May, 2004 - approaches the "full" or zero-phase angle. And a little over a year before he died: Dick's data demonstrated this. Hi All, He wrote a paper presenting this data to the As you may have heard, I recently sold my American Astronomical Society meeting in l7.5-inch Newtonian-Dobsonian telescope. It was Flagstaff in June, 1964. Dr. Fred Whipple cited the just too big for me to manage (since my heart has work as "outstanding" and "a fine piece of work". lost 2/3 of its function). So now I bought a new Dick and his coworkers built on this success. and smaller one - an 8-inch f/5.9 ORION comput- They designed and built a mobile satellite photo- er-assisted XT8 Intelliscope. I move it with a hand metric observatory. This was a 24" f/20 Cassegrain truck on two 10-inch wheels. Here is my log entry telescope on a 4-axis mount. Dick later observed regarding my early observations with the new tel- the PAGEOS satellite with this observatory from escope, from my light-polluted backyard in North Mt. Palomar. This included photometry through Canton, last Monday evening, May 24, 2004 various filters and including polarization. (1) Soon after dark, I found Comet NEAT. When Dick returned to teaching in 1970, his Then I changed eyepieces to my $ 2500. Collins' observing returned to more personal pursuits. He photo-multiplier image-intensifier, which reaches continued to observe satellites and turn in data to an extra two magnitudes. (The man who bought the Smithsonian until Moonwatch was disbanded my 17.5" lives out in the country where skies are in 1975. After that, he observed satellites more for dark. He reported that with the 17.5, he could recreation. He particularly was intrigued with geo- trace both gas and dust tails of the comet for five stationary satellites - which he called the most dis- degrees! ) My Collins eyepiece compensated tant manmade objects visible from Earth. And somewhat for my smaller aperture, and in spite of another satellite that intrigued him for a while was the comet meanwhile having moved about 5 mil- a tether satellite. It had two masses connected by lion miles farther away, and my sky was not as a taut "string" that is 2.5 miles long. He described dark as his, I could trace both tails for two its appearance through the telescope as "a gold degrees! baton with a diamond at each end". The differen- (2) Changing back to a 4 mm e.f.l. Plossl tial gravity on the two masses kept the string verti- eyepiece, with my 2.3x Barlow (thus, 690-x mag- cal and taut. He said: nification), I observed double stars Gamma "It seems incredible that we can see the teth- Leonis (sep. now 4.4 arcsec), Castor (sep. now er, which is only 0.080" wide, but we can. The 4.2 arcsec), and the quadruple stars Epsilon 1 & many glints of light along its 2.5 mile length are 2 Lyra (sep. now 2.5 and 2.4 arcsec). At this mag- integrated by the eye and brain to appear as a nification the separation in each case, was wide continuous line - a phenomenon very much like and dark. From this I estimated that I could the one that made Percival Lowell think he saw resolve doubles (of similar brightness) as close as canals on Mars" 0.6 arcsec (the Dawes limit). Naturally, I am very Dick was always good for a "spur of the satisfied with the optical performance of this tele- moment" satellite alert. A couple months after HST scope. launched, he called and alerted us to a pass. Robin (3) Using a 25 mm Plossl (48-x), I checked and I drove down south of Canton on 7/1/90 to see the two 9,216-step magnetic encoders on the AZ HST cross low in the south. The M-11 geostation- and ALT axes, and the hand-held computer-assist ary was another favorite alert subject. He also (which has a data base of well over 14,000 celes- helped several of us see the tether satellite men- tial targets, including an internal time interval tioned above. keeper, the celestial mechanics for Earth and 8 Dick continued to observe in his retirement. In other major planets, 110 Messier objects, 837 fact, after Phyllis passed away, Dick rearranged his stars, 7,840 NGC objects, 5,386 IC objects, plus sleep schedule and stayed up much of the night. twelve "monthly tours" and 99 user-entered We knew not to call Dick before about 2 in the objects!!) After "initializing" the computer by afternoon. He followed satellites on the Internet pointing overhead and then to two stars (I chose and had particular interest in unusual ones. Altair and Denebola), I entered the date and then "asked" to be directed to Saturn, then Jupiter, then I have not seen Dick's observing logs. But if you galaxies Messier 81 and 82 (both in the same field want a taste of what they must be like, read this of view FOV), then the Ring Nebula M-57 in Lyra, HORIZON 25 then the Globular Cluster M-13 in Hercules, then he even interpreted the data as to the size of the the Bridal Veil nebula in Cygnus (NGC 6960), features doing the occulting and the linear speed of and finally the wide double star Albierio. My the moon's limb through space. FIRST target was Saturn and when I looked in the Of course, an observation that we were inti- eyepiece it was in the CENTER of my FOV!! Most mately involved with in Dick's later years was the of my targets were well-centered, and only a cou- opposition of the asteroid 5391 Emmons in 2002. ple were just beyond the edge of my FOV--and Dick very much wanted to see this rock - as you these were immediately found by a tiny sweep. can imagine. The whole story is told elsewhere in R.H.E. this issue. But Dick felt he could see it from his For whatever reason, variable stars never inter- home in light-polluted North Canton. He even ested Dick much. But he did enjoy occultations. I made a considerable investment in an image-inten- alerted him to an occultation of a bright star by the sifying eyepiece. It turned out that the rock was asteroid 4 Vesta in early 1987. He submitted tim- elusive - it was fainter than we expected based on ings to me, and I passed them on to IOTA. the predictions. But if anyone could have seen it, Similarly he observed several grazes from his back- it would have been Dick. I am just happy that we yard and submitted his data through me. His data were able to help him see it at TWC. was always precise. In the data for a graze in 1999,

Dick's Telescopes they turned him down. A Cleveland attorney later BY DAVE GILL purchased it so he could donate it to John Carroll No discussion of Dick Emmons would be com- University, where it was installed in a new obser- plete without his love affair with telescopes. vatory. This telescope was ahead of its time in sev- eral ways. He ground its mirror himself - no small Shortly after the astronomy bug bit Dick in task. It was a thin mirror rather than a full thick- 1932, he persuaded his father to purchase a 2" ness one. And the construction was an open truss refracting telescope for him from the Sears tube on a fork mount. Catalog- the best on they advertised. It cost $30, during the midst of the depres- During his days at the KSU Canton Branch, sion - no small sum. He recalled Dick started an astronomy club his "first light" object - Arcturus - from interested students. Among on July 25, 1932. His second their projects was the making of object turned out to be Saturn. fourteen 4" reflecting telescopes, After midnight he watched the costing each participant about last quarter moon rise and saw $17. A later project was building his first lunar craters. a 12" Newtonian with glass and abrasives Dick donated. The Dick began earning money for University paid for the mechani- astronomy speaking engagements cal parts of the telescope includ- and newspaper articles. Some of ing a driven equatorial mount. In this got poured back into tele- 1948, twenty-one 6" telescopes scopes. By 1939 he built a very were built by students at a cost of large telescope - a 13" f/9 about $30. Later in 1948 an addi- Newtonian. Dick reckoned it to be tional 25 scopes were built. the third largest in Ohio at the time - after the 69" at Perkins and I've not been able to pick up a 16" Alvan Clark refractor at the trail of Dick's personal tele- Cincinnati. He set it up at Kent scope herd until March, 1956. He State when he attended there, wrote an article that was pub- and offered public viewing lished in Sky & Telescope about through it. He later offered this Young Dick and one of his first his North Canton Planetarium. scope to Kent State for free, but telescopes — mid 1930’s One photograph with the article 26 HORIZON

herd to mine. It is a lovely low power, wide field scope. Again, I lose the trail of Dick's herd until the mid-70's. It was then that he built a 14" Newtonian telescope that he kept mounted in his back yard - first on Donner Rd. then when he moved to Sixth St. As usual, he kept records of this instrument. The mirror was a Coulter mirror - 14.3" f/4.9. The mount was a commercial mount. The tube was rolled aluminum. Dick kept the scope outdoors and brought the mirrors indoors. Finally, this got to be too much for him and he sold the scope to me in 1990. I totally rebuilt it into a truss tube Dob using only the primary mirror and cell. Like he did back in 1976, I used Arcturus as my "first light". It was an unintended coincidence - I chose Arcturus The Aoogee telescope Dick used for many because it was 35 light years away, and I was 35 at satellite observations the time. By the mid 1980's Dick had the telescope bug shows the outside of the planetarium with what again. One of the documents I found is a late 1986 looks like an 8" Newtonian on an equatorial mount memo he wrote to himself arguing for and against and a 60mm refractor (see photo on page 12). buying an 8" Celestron Powerstar 8 computer con- As a result of the excellent work done by the trolled scope. He talked himself out of it, and Moonwatch group, they were loaned ten 5" Apogee decided to invest in recoating the 14" mirror with telescopes with permanent right angle eyepieces. I better coatings. At this time he was also consider- don't know what became of the others, but Dick ing the Coulter Odyssey Dobs. kept one (they were eventually given to the Obviously something changed because in a observers), and it now has migrated from Dick's September 1989 picture we see, in addition to the 14" and the 5" Apogee, an 8" orange tube Celestron and a 10" Meade. By the time another picture was taken in late 1998 he had a different herd. The Meade and the 14" were gone. He still had the Celestron and the Apogee. But now he had a 13" Odyssey Dob, a 17" home made Dob that his broth- er-in-law built for him, and an 8" Dob. By this time Dick had had a heart attack and was considerably

Dick’s home-made 14” Dick’s telescopes in September, 1989 HORIZON 27

here again: Old telescopes never die, they are just laid away. There is little about a telescope that can deteriorate and the lens, the vital organ, even though a century old, can still have all the fire and sparkle of its youth. Sometimes, however, for one reason or another, telescopes do become dor- mant or go into a state of suspended animation, and at such times, as they slowly gather the dust of the passing years, it seems that they must won- der just what has happened to the hands which once so eagerly pointed them to the skies. In this same vein I too have often wondered about all those myriads who, with many an expression of utter amazement and delight, have watched the rings of Saturn, the craters of the Dick’s telescopes in 1998 moon or the incredible Orion Nebula through these same instruments of mine. Both these tele- weakened. Portability became the main issue for scopes, even before they came to me, had already him over the last years. By the time he died, the served long careers before public eyes. ... each has 17" had been sold, the 13" was sold to Bill Castro spent a lifetime in showing off the skies. So it (the famous "water heater" scope), and the 8" was would seem logical that, out of these thousands sold to Jeff Brest. Jeanne took one scope, Dave who, at some time, have peered into these tele- Ross took one for Camp Wanake, and I got the scopes, there must be at least a few who, in some Apogee scope. way, have had the course of their lives changed or One of the last scopes Dick bought, shortly affected by the impact of the wonders they saw, before he was diagnosed with cancer in late 2004 even as I once brushed against some stars which was a little computer-controlled refractor. He said left a lifetime mark on me. he had come full circle back to a 2" scope like he ... These telescopes of mine are not just bits of started out with. As was typical of Dick, he fiddled property. I like to think of them as gifts in trust with the optics to get them how he wanted them. and myself as their administrator; one who is But he never really got the chance to use it as a go- grateful that it has fallen to his lot to open up their to scope. His health deteriorated too rapidly. eyes and let them see the stars again. They now I found a passage in Leslie Peltier's "Starlight seem quite rejuvenated and, with youthful zest, Nights" which I quoted to Dick when I bought his they look ahead to long and useful lives. ... I still 14" from him. I think it is fitting to reproduce it regard them with that feeling of deep reverence that one accords a patriarch, for they have wit- nessed much of history.

Dick reflecting on (and in) his 17” mirror — 2003 Dick and his 8” Celestron (one of my favorite pictures) 28 HORIZON The Rock Hounds the phantom Summer 2002 HORIZON. This BY DAVE GILL proved to be a little adventure in itself. I have three different pieces of planetarium software If you have humored me over the years by residing on my laptop - "Starry Night Pro", reading the pieces I've written for HORIZON, "MegaStar" and "Guide 8.0". Each has its own you've seen me expound on more than one occa- strengths and weaknesses, and I like all three for sion about the subtle pleasures of astronomical certain things. By reputation, Guide is the best for observing. Amateur astronomy is not for those doing orbital work with comets and asteroids. wanting to be blown away by sensory excess. But I Unfortunately, it was the program I had the least think that my most recent excursion into the experience with. So, I got to learn it. The results realms of observing astronomical phenomena were the charts that are on the web page. probably has to take the award for being about the most esoteric thing I've ever tried to observe. Yet, The real power of "Guide" is that it has the abil- it proved to be a most exciting and satisfying hunt, ity to plot stars fainter than we can see with the and stretched the observing muscles of all of us Keller. It has the Hubble Guide Star catalog stars who were involved. and you can use Guide to download sections of other catalogs such as the Naval Observatory's A2 It began a little over 2 years ago when a Minor catalog. So in the process, I learned about plotting Planet Center Circular was issued: asteroid paths, adding reference circles for scale, "MPC (Minor Planet Circular) 40701. 5391 choosing the magnitude limits and scale sizes for Emmons = 1985 RE2. Discovered 1985 the charts, and how to pick off reference magni- September 13 by E.F. Helin at Palomar. Richard tudes, etc. If you are a serious amateur, I highly Emmons (b. 1919), Emeritus Professor of recommend "Guide 8.0" to you. It is only $89, and Physics at Ohio's Kent State University had his the author gives great support. I made Dick a set of interest in astronomy sparked by an article charts for his use with stars down to 16.0 magni- published soon after the discovery of 1932 HA tude, figuring that he wouldn't be able to see that (now 1862) Apollo. He was an early observer of deep from home. I was right. But unfortunately, artificial satellites." the asteroid ended up fainter than had been Now, I've never been a big observer of aster- expected as well. oids. Beyond the "Big Four" and an occasional As the date of opposition, around September 8, asteroid occultation, I've pretty much ignored approached we had to make a formal plan for our them. But this one was going to be different. This assault on 5391. The moon looked favorable for the one was personal. If you check the web page piece weekends of the weekends of Aug. 30 and Sept. 6 - I wrote at: especially the latter. The asteroid was in Aquarius, http://www.twcac.org/onlinehorizon/5391_Emmons.htm so we'd have to wait till about midnight for it to be I even opened my big mouth and promised Dick high enough to have a reasonable shot at it. We that we would find that little bugger with the 16" decided to try any good night we got. Keller scope. It seemed a harmless little promise at Dick was already trying from home. the time - heck it was two years off. Unfortunately his home site is in the northwest Fast forward to 2002. The day of reckoning part of North Canton, and is quite light polluted. was fast approaching. I talked with Dick about the But he has a variety of instruments, the kidney and upcoming event, and he informed me that he had lots of skill and desire. Up to the night of the 30th, purchased an image intensifying eyepiece, the "I- he had not found it from home, plus he added the cubed" piece. The idea was to brighten up the faint ominous fact that he had noted a lot of difficulty in star-like image of his "pet rock" to enable him to finding Pluto over the summer, and it was about as see it from his home. These devices are rather bright as 5391 could be expected to get. expensive, and he joked that he had to sell a kid- The night of the WCAC meeting on the 30th, ney to purchase it. The eyepiece was hereafter we went down after the meeting and fired up the referred to as "Dick's kidney". Keller scope. I had my charts, but had not really I updated my orbital elements and started studied them yet. The Keller scope is noted for working to make finder charts for the web page and being a brute to manipulate - bringing to mind the HORIZON 29 astronomical parody of Gilbert & Sullivan's "A the I3 inverts the image, rendering an erect image. British Tar is a Soaring Soul" from HMS Pinafore - So imagine the scene. I've just spent about 45 min- His knees should bend and his neck should curl utes continually navigating a high power visual His back should twist and his face should scowl. field and recovering the asteroid field over and One eye should squint and the other protrude over. I knew it pretty well. Then, after midnight, And this should be his customary attitude. Dick changes the rules on me! We have to navigate it upside down and backwards with an even small- (written 1879 by Winslow Upton of the Harvard er field (about 1/3 the size I was using before). Plus College Observatory) I'll have to move off of the field we've been looking It was made worse by my "customary attitude" at to focus on a relatively bright star. Geeeeez. - tired and frustrated and this time in pain from a But, I picked up the skill after a short while and we foot problem. I was ill prepared. The finders were found the field - minus the asteroid again. We final- not properly aligned, and I could not even find the ly gave up about 12:45 am. right field stars. John and Bill were looking in the Our second weekend of opportunity was upon Resetar 10" Schmidt-Cass. They found the field, us. I invited Dick down to the Public Night at TWC but could not find the rock. My magnitude nota- on Sept. 6. It was gloriously clear that night. I took tions suggested that the rock must be in the mid- my 14" down, and I planned on trying the dreaded 15's somewhere. No one was certain they saw it. 16" workout again as well. We found it with the 14" Or even vaguely confident. We took Dick home, all without much problem. A number of us, including of us disappointed. Dick, Dave Ross, Eric Mast, Bill, John, Jim Quinn Dick tried more from home, but did not suc- and others saw it- mostly intermittently with avert- ceed. Bill Castro tried imaging it from home with ed vision. Then Dick pulled the ol' kidney trick on his Astrovid, and we thought he captured it. But me again - but this time my experience on my finder charts were a little off, and I later dis- Wednesday had made me confident I could navigate covered a faint star where the asteroid was thought the field. We found it and could see it steadily. to be. But the Labor Day holiday meant that Bill & Then we went into the observatory. While I John had another weekend night to practice imag- was starting with the Keller - by aligning the finder ing and sleep deprivation. This time they used - Dick watched as John imaged the field again with John's STV camera on the Resetar. And this time his STV. I found the field again in the Keller. We they captured the beastie - even its motion! noted that the asteroid had moved with respect to Looking at the image confirmed the asteroid to be the background. That confirmed that we were see- fainter than expected - probably 15.3 - 15.6. But it ing the right thing. With the Keller we could see it was amazing that John could go that "deep" with a steadily with regular optics as well as with the kid- 25 second exposure. ney - which thank goodness could be used without Dick was excited to see the images. It proved the Barlow on the Keller. that the fifty-three hundred and ninety first rock from the sun was where it was supposed to be and right on schedule. He kept trying at home. On Wednesday evening, Sept. 4, I invited Dick over to my yard to try with my 14" Dob. (For those of you who don't know, my 14" mirror used to be Dick's 14" mirror - I bought it from him in 1991-ish). We worked at it for quite a while. I know I had the field, but could not spot the asteroid. We got out Dick's kidney and tried some more. Now this is where things get even trickier. You see, the I3 piece has a rather narrow field of view to start with. And it does not come to a focus on my 14" - because of my mirror positioning. So Dick suggested using a Barlow lens. It had the desired effect on the focus, but it cut the field down The happy rock hounds the night we recovered 5391 to about 6 arcminutes - really small. In addition Emmons. John Waechter, Bill Castro, Dick Emmons (and Kidney) Rick Breehl, Dave Gill & Dave Ross 30 HORIZON

So, that night Dick and I went home happy - he had seen the eponymous rock that had so far elud- I asked the IOTA (International Occultation ed his skilled searches, and I was happy - Timing Association) mailing list if anyone could 1. Because I found it image 5391 Emmons at opposition, since I was 2. Because I kept my promise to Dick, and not confident in our ability to do so (John and 3. Because Dick was happy. Bill proved me wrong, as usual - please pass the crow). Dr. Maurice Clark from Goodsell Observ- Lessons Learned: atory at Carleton College in Minnesota took me 1. When hunting for faint objects, excellent up, and supplied some photos. He also did some charts are a must. Overkill is better than under- photometry, and published this in Minor Planet kill. The value of a program like Guide or Megastar Bulletin #30 cannot be overemphasized for making custom charts. Mark magnitudes of strategic stars both from navigational need and for estimating visual magnitudes. 2. Preparation. Make a plan for your star hops. Try to draw maps and point out shapes on your charts to aid your star hopping. Study the field in binoculars before starting with the scope. 3. Finders - the Keller has a problem with a lousy assortment of finder scopes which suffer from either small aperture or too high power (and thus too small a field). A good wide field is a neces- sity. Be sure the finder is aligned with the optical axis of the telescope. We believe the Keller flexes, requiring frequent adjustments as we point at dif- ferent areas of the sky. 4. Take your time. Dark adapt - put a hood over your head to block stray light. Breathe deeply. Use faint red light if possible for referring to the charts. Epilog - thus far (as of Sept. 14) Dick has still not captured the rock from home - a combination of the unexpected faintness of the asteroid, the light pollution of his site, and the fact that his big scope (a 17" Dob) has an open tube and is prone to a great deal of light scatter that degrades contrast. So, Dick, thanks for the fun ride. It was an exciting trip. We all learned a lot and benefited from the challenge. Bless your heart (and your kidney, too)!

Asteroid 5391 Emmons images courtesy of Maurice Clark HORIZON 31 My Memory of Dick

BY BILL CASTRO

I was saddened to hear of Dick's passing on my return from vacation. I would have liked to have been at his service. He was quite an interesting fel- low and I am sure it was well attended as he has touched many in his lifetime. I would like to men- tion my 13.1 inch scope that I bought from him. The one my wife dubbed "The Water Heater". When I went to his house to check it out, he had it pointed at a geostationary satellite. Of all things, he used the street light to help find it. After initial- ly finding the satellite he marked the scopes shad- ow from the street light, on his garage wall and the scope base was marked on the driveway. That way to find it again, he placed the scope base in the exact same spot and lined up the scopes shadow to the marks. A simple and elegant solution. As Dave Gill wrote words to the effect of, "Leave it to Dick to make lemonade out of that lemon of a street light". Dick’s 13” Odyssey, purchased from Terry Kirby, which later gained notoriety as “The Water Heater” As Dick was involved in Astronomy education as part of Bill Castro’s herd. with the public it is interesting to note that his old "Water Heater" is still being used for education. I use it now exclusively for outreach and occasional- the Water Heater. I bought it in Oct. 2000. ly on public viewing nights. Figure on 500 students Therefore, 5 years * 330 = over 1,500 served and per year at outreach of which I attend 2/3 of them counting! I will always think of him when I am make for 330 students per year that look through using this scope.

Richard Emmons Scholarship Fund

Jeanne Bishop has set up a scholarship fund at The Wilderness Center to honor the memory of her remarkable father. She has asked the WCAC to administer this fund. Distributions will be made annually to recognize a high school senior in Stark County who has exemplified interest and excellence in space science. Anyone interested in making a contribution to this fund should contact The Wilderness Center and reference the Richard Emmons Scholarship Fund. It is altogether fitting that a student should be honored in Dick's memory.