Page 62 - Astronomy - October 2017 USA

Memories

from a

BACKYARD

OBSERVER

Decades-old observing journals recall
a time when Voyager utterly transformed
what we know about the outer planets.
by Raymond Shubinski

ON
Valentine’s Day 1990, Voyager 1 sent a loving and
last portrait of the solar system it had begun to
explore 13 years earlier. Its camera was turned
backward to catch a final glimpse of a home now
billions of miles away. For nearly a decade and a
half, the cameras of Voyager 1 and 2 had looked outward, deliver-
ing images of the outer solar system as never seen before.
Voyager 2 launched August 20, 1977, and its sister, Voyager 1,
departed 16 days later. By mid-1979, both spacecraft had made
close approaches to the giant of the solar system, Jupiter, and then
journeyed on to worlds so distant, our minds fail to comprehend
the immensity of that space. For all of us sitting back on Earth,
this was an incredible time of discovery only dreamed of a few
years earlier.
A few months after the Voyagers left Earth, I was working with
current Astronomy Senior Editor Michael E. Bakich at a small
planetarium in Lafayette, Louisiana. We delivered program after
program on the Voyager mission. Schoolchildren and the public
alike were thrilled with every detail of this unfolding adventure.
We also ventured out every possible night to observe the targets of
all this excitement: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
Blast from the past
Recently I rediscovered some of those memories in my observing
Always spectacular in backyard telescopes, Jupiter shows notes and journals. An early morning rendezvous with Jupiter
its cloud bands, Great Red Spot, and other features and Saturn, for example, on October 21, 1978, recalls that both
explored in such depth by Voyager. CHRISTOPHER GO
planets were well placed in the east an hour or so before sunrise.
We were observing with a 6-inch refractor mounted on an old
surveyor’s tripod. My drawings show one cloud band of Jupiter as

62 ASTRONOMY • OCTOBER 2017