From our Guest Blogger, Dr. David Levy, Skyward October 2025

 

Skyward for October 2025

 

By

 

Doveed.

 

a.k.a. David H. Levy

 

         It was late in the afternoon of 19 July, 1963.  I was a 15-year-old patient at the time at the Jewish National Home for Asthmatic Children in Denver, Colorado, and had begun my association with the Denver Astronomical Society.  The people running the Asthma Home had generously granted permission for me to return home for a week in order to see a total eclipse of the Sun that would occur on Saturday, July 20. 

            Late that afternoon the day before the eclipse, Dad awoke from a nap in a terrible mood.  He turned towards Mom and said,  “All David cares about are his damned stars.”

            Obviously I was upset to overhear his words but I let them pass.  His mood improved, and the next day we three saw a spectacular total eclipse of the Sun.  Having a lifelong curiosity about history, Dad was flabbergasted when the eclipse, which had been predicted millennia earlier by the ancient Greeks, began right on time, to the second.  The saros goes all the way back to the Chaldean astronomers in the centuries BCE, and was understood by Ptolemy, Pliny, and Hipparchus.

The only issue we had was at the start of totality.  I took off my eclipse glasses, and my parents had fits telling me to put them back on.  I had a choice.  I could spend the sixty seconds of totality arguing with them that it is perfectly safe to witness the total phase without protection, or I could just put my glasses back on.

            I put my glasses back on.  Then I turned away, took them off, and enjoyed the total eclipse.

            Years later, Dad and I were walking together.  “Do you remember,” he inquired, “when I awoke from my nap and said that all you care about are your damned stars?” 

            I admitted that I did remember.  “May I take those words back?”

            “Why?  You were right. That was all I cared about back then.”

            “But if I had had the faintest idea what you were going to do with your damned stars,  I would have been so much more supportive.” (And he said that to me before I found my first comet.).

            In the 41 years since I found that comet, I have had more joy that I can imagine.   Never have I gone out to my observatory to look at the stars, and not felt better, far better, when I went back inside.  My parents, and my wife, are gone, but I have a daughter, a son-in-law, two grandchildren, and a great grandson.  When they ask me a question—even for a second, the charisma intensifies.   And it is not just observing.  My relationship with many astronomy societies, including the Denver Astronomical Society, which has continued over the years, has recently intensified.  I am their poet laureate and get to share a poem at the start of their meetings.

            Whether I am alone or with a group of people, for me, nights under the stars are an indescribable thrill. 

 

 Two pictures.  The first shows my friend Ken Wiener, with his Mother.

My Mom and Dad are in the front seat of the car.

The second shows my daughter, two grandchildren, and my Mom.