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Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,

And many goodly stars and clusters seen;

Round celestial islands have I been

With telescope after telescope to the night sky hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That Galileo ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Baade speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new star cluster swims into his ken;

Through his majestic window looks upon the Milky Way

He star’d at the centre of our galaxy.… Continue reading.

Ever since I read Bart J. Bok’s foreword to Rose Wilder’s and Gerald Ames’ The Golden Book of Astronomy, I have marveled at what the night sky had to offer and how much of that has changed. “Such wonders,” Bok wrote,” fill this book.”… Continue reading.

On May 30 observers all across the western hemisphere were outside, hoping to see a wonderful “new” meteor shower. The shower is actually not new. It is called the Tau Herculids, and it sends us dust particles from Comet Schwassmann-Wachman III.… Continue reading.

In the late summer of 1964 I was leaving the Observatory of the Royal Astronomical Society’s Montreal Centre with some friends, one of whom was David Zackon. I asked the group if they would like to drop by my house to observe with a 3.5-inch reflector.… Continue reading.