pread the astronomical bug through field
t rips, leadingcampers into the woods tospot
Halley’s comet or popping up with pinhole
ameras for solar eclipses And at the Har
vard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
in Cambridge, hundreds of the field's
brightest lights crowd the halls.
At Penn State, in contrast, the entire
department can fit around a good-size din
ner table—yet each of its 10 faculty mem
bers is pursuing a distinct path. Feigelson
scans the skies for objects that emit X-rays
or radio waves. Next door sits Associate
Prof. Lawrence Ramsey, an opt ical ast rono
mer—he works with visible light—whoquit
a higher-paying but unfulfilling engineer
ing job to study the stars. Prof. Gordon
Garmire, respected internationally for his
work with X-ray observation, won part of a
coveted space X-ray telescope project for
Penn State. Down the hall, Hungarian
born Associate Prof. Peter Meszaros, a theo
rist, wrestles with the inner workings of
quasars—distant galaxies with massive
black holes in their centers that emit many
types of radiation—and plans experiments
to test his ideas. All of the approaches are
necessary since, as Feigelson says, "You
can’t grab a star and poke it.”
Quarter peaks: stargazers also hnd em
ployment in the outside world; one-third of
America’s astronomers work for the gov
ernment, most of them within the system of
federally funded national observatories.
Others serve with the space program, ei
ther with NASA or aerospace firms, or with
computer consulting firms. "The skills you
learn as an astronomer are remarkably
portable,” says James Wertz, a former as
t ronomer who heads a smal 1 aerospace con
sulting firm. These posts often provide
higher pay than schools, but can pose con
flicts for scientists who must abandon pure
research for narrow tasks or who deplore
military uses of space such as Star Wars.
There are even opportunities for an un
trained but enthusiastic avocationist. Sev
eral nights each month, for instance, Tony
Hoffman sets up his $400 Japanese-made
scope in Greenwich Village and invites pas
sersby to gaze at Jupiter, Saturn and the
moon—at 25 cents per squint. Hoffman
took astronomy courses at the University
of Michigan but didn’t major in it. By day,
he works in magazine production After
' wo years of free-lancing, he says he has
amassed enough quarters from his 50 or so
nightly clients to pay for his instrument.
Full-time astronomers, on the other
mnd, are highly trained at the 67 degree
. ranting programs in the United States,
most often taking an undergraduate dec
ree in physics topped off by an astronomy
loctorate. Often academic astronomers
must also master physics, computer sci
ence and engineering. Because female and
black students have not gravitated to these
disciplines in huge numbers, astronomy
C A KOI HERS SON
Sky guide: Free lancer Hoffman ami young clients
And there is the case of the Ad
vanced X-ray Astrophysics Fa
cility i AXAFi, a space telescope
planned for the 1990b A major
part of the multimillion-dollnr
project, in which Penn State
participates, was lost last Au
gust when an off-course rocket
had to bo destroyed; the culprit,
a resistor like those sold for less
than a dollar at Radio Shack,
had been installed through a
design error The loss and de
lays mean harder times for
space-based projects already
squeezed by a cost-conscious
Congress
No time: Despite setbacks, as
tronomers are generally pa
tient—a quality that's helpful
when you're sitting all night on
mountaintops and dealing with
infinite scales of time and space
They persevere, though surely
not for fame; the last astrono
mer to become a household
name. Kdmund Halley, diet! 244
years ago. They even stay on
despite the fact that very few
remains largely a fraternity of white
males; there are fewer than 10 black as
tronomers among the 3,500 in the United
States, and only about 12 percent of the
total are women
As a career, astronomy has its share of.
well, nebulous prospects. Long-term proj
ects can suffer costly and time-consuming
setbacks. The Challenger t/agedy and sub
sequent shuttle delays have stymied those
astronomers whodependon manned flights
to carry their experimental equipment.
outside the field seem to understand what
they do: Andrew Young, a lecturer at San
Diego State University recalls that soon
after completing his dissertation, a woman
at a party asked what he did for a living
Proudly he declared, "lam an astronomer "
At which the woman wrinkled her nose and
said, "Yeah, I had an aunt who believed in
that stuff once.” Even when you earn your
living reaching for the stars, there's always
someone to bring you down to eart h
John Schwartz
IJUK HK(MM;K0KA VKKIOMN i AMP4 ANNN
Catch the wava: Penn State's Feigelson (right) and Ramsey uith imaging computer