Jim Crowley at his backyard observatory
Astronomy began for Jim Crowley, of Lovettsville’s
Quarter Branch Road, when he was 13, with a toy spy glass that he took on a
trip; his interest persisted and grew because of a loving grandfather in the space
age 60s who was active in a local astronomy club.
Everyone looks up at the night sky to explore the
surface of the moon, to watch that bright spot many can identify as Venus, and
to marvel at the billions of blisteringly hot stars with coronal temperatures measured
in millions of degrees as they speed through dark empty cold space emitting all
manner of exotic and life-threatening radiation.
We look in awe and curiosity at what’s beautiful and
we learn about what’s past as the light of these stars has been traveling for
millions of years and we discover laws of physics that help us explain and
sustain our unique life on this blue cat’s eye marble called Earth.
But few of us are caught to explore the skies
through an eye piece – at least not as Jim was caught.
“I was more gung ho than the average person,” Jim
said, “and I made my first telescope mirror from a kit I bought at a drug
store. You couldn’t find one in a drug
store today.”
“Today, I have a whole bunch of telescopes – dozens I’ve
made myself,” Jim said, “one in my back yard observatory. It looks like a little shed, the roof rolls
back, but this time of year, I’m not so brave to go out there, as it’s extremely
cold. I have another in West Virginia.”
“I grind all my own mirrors for my reflecting telescopes,”
Jim said. “I capture pictures
electronically, although I can observe the sky in real time.” Jim has a catalogue of impressive space shots
he’s taken of the craters of the moon, the planets, spiral galaxies and more. He has arranged for viewings by friends and
neighbors.
“We have a guy out at our place in West Virginia,”
Jim said, “a little asterisk community of amateur astronomers that came
together by chance. He’s discovered an
asteroid using his completely motorized observatory. He doesn’t even have to be there. He analyzes all the data at a distance. That’s what amateurs can do.”
Jim said, “There are so many who are doing it every
night. Hubble wastes a lot of time looking at the same thing over and over.”
But what was it about the times when you were young that
got you interested this way? There was the
Russians’ Sputnik circling the earth, and then President Kennedy said he would
get a man on the moon by the end of the 60s. Jim thought to be an astronaut, answering the
call of his young age, applied to become one, but it was before he earned his
PhD in Geology and you had to have an advanced degree in those days to qualify. Jim attended UVA undergrad, earned his
Masters in Geology from GWU, and his PhD in Maryland, and then went to work for
the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
While Jim didn’t get to travel in space, after he
joined USGS, he got to study space from earth.
There was a Mars research proposal funded by NASA
and the objective was to compare terrestrial analogs of what we have here on
earth with what the NASA space missions were finding on Mars. “I traveled to Western Australia,” Jim said, “where
the salt lakes are acidic and the NASA team thought that might be comparable to
the surface of Mars.”
NASA also sponsored the Galileo mission, two
spacecraft kicked out of Earth’s orbit by an inertial upper state rocket. “They didn’t know how to interpret the salts
they found on that mission,” Jim said.
But Jim had done a lot of research on the spectrums of light that correspond
to minerals.
Jim said, “the way it works is the earth reflects
light at different wavelengths, and that’s characteristic of what the earth’s made
of. You can measure these things from an
aircraft or space and make maps of mineral compositions on the ground. It’s a form of geological remote
sensing. When I got into it in late 80s,
it was just beginning. I watched the
technique evolve. Sensors got better.
That’s where it is now.”
Finally, there was Beatriz Rivero de Luz, a PhD
candidate from Brazil, focusing on the spectroscopy of plants. Jim’s retired mentor from USGS had written on
the spectroscopy of plants. When Beatriz
found Jim’s mentor in Florida, he told her to talk to Jim. “I realized that ‘Rivero de Luz” meant ‘river
of light.’ Just by her name, I was
looking forward to meeting her.”
Apparently, she shared Jim’s interest, and they were
married a year later.
But the more things change, the more they remain the same. “When we traveled to South America,” Beatriz said, “he took a hundred pounds of equipment with him.” Beatriz blogged about their telescopic adventures (http://astrobananas.blogspot.com/ ).
The Moon as Jim sees it!
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