box. From my pinhole camera days I remembered that film was developed in red light, which doesn’t affect it. But these photographic plates were designed to be
especially
sensitive to red light, as objects in the Kuiper belt tend to be on the red side. All of the work on the plates, then, had to be done with no lights whatsoever. When the plate was unpacked, it would be walked to the telescope and inserted into the base. Only then was the shutter of the telescope opened and the light from the sky allowed to beam onto the plate. Thirty minutes later, someone would again walk to the top of the stairs in the dark, take the plate out of its holder, and then walk to the other side of the dark dome floor and place the plate into a miniature manual elevator and drop it down to the other person who was waiting in the darkroom below. The person on the dome floor would get a new plate and begin looking at a new patch of sky, while the person in the darkroom washed the plate in a succession of developer and fixer fluids until, about the time that the plate was finished, a new plate would appear in the miniature elevator. In the morning, before going to sleep, Jean and Kevin would look at the crop of pictures from the night. Some would be smeared or have defective photographic emulsion and have to be rejected, but the good ones got labeled, put into the cabinet, and filed on my list. The next night we would review what had happened the night before, discuss the weather forecast, curse the encroaching moon, and start over again.
I found this exhausting, and I was the only one of the three of us actually sleeping at night.
The goal was to get three good images of each of the fifteen fields during the course of the month. Ideally they would betaken three nights in a row. My job was to examine each of the images and, as astronomers had been doing for two hundred years, look for the things that move.
Kevin and Jean must have been happy that the moon existed, since bright time was the only time that they got a few days off. But I was no fan of the moon. I became increasingly agitated as the month progressed from gray to dark to gray again and finally the bright approached. Invariably as the month was coming to an end we would be behind schedule owing to problems with the weather or problems with the photographic plates. I would count ahead the number of nights left before bright time commenced and almost always find that everything had to go perfectly or we would lose one of our fields. And every lost field meant that any planets out there in the sky suddenly had a huge place to hide. Our net would have holes. Near the end of the month, Jean and Kevin would invariably work overtime. I could do nothing except sit in Pasadena, stare at the moon, and fret.
Somehow, we managed. In two years of surveying the sky with the 48-inch Schmidt Telescope, we actually managed to get every image of every field we wanted except for one. We mostly beat the moon. Final score: 48-inch Schmidt, 239 fields; moon, only one field. Those 239 fields we had covered were only about 15 percent of the whole sky, but it was, we thought at the time, the right 15 percent. The moon and planets are all strewn across the sky in a giant ring encircling the sun, and we had looked at that ring—as well as a good bit above and below—for a period of about four months, or one-third of the whole ring. So while we had looked at a relatively small fraction of the sky, it was much of the interesting sky, and it was enormous compared to what had been previously examined. We hadn’t taken our net through the entire ocean, but thought we knew one of the whales’ major swimming grounds, and we had trawled it all.
Looking at vastly more sky than anyone else had ever looked at for large objects out in the Kuiper belt was so immensely exciting that I could hardly contain myself. I
knew
that there would be big discoveries, and having new pictures come in night after night after night
especially
sensitive to red light, as objects in the Kuiper belt tend to be on the red side. All of the work on the plates, then, had to be done with no lights whatsoever. When the plate was unpacked, it would be walked to the telescope and inserted into the base. Only then was the shutter of the telescope opened and the light from the sky allowed to beam onto the plate. Thirty minutes later, someone would again walk to the top of the stairs in the dark, take the plate out of its holder, and then walk to the other side of the dark dome floor and place the plate into a miniature manual elevator and drop it down to the other person who was waiting in the darkroom below. The person on the dome floor would get a new plate and begin looking at a new patch of sky, while the person in the darkroom washed the plate in a succession of developer and fixer fluids until, about the time that the plate was finished, a new plate would appear in the miniature elevator. In the morning, before going to sleep, Jean and Kevin would look at the crop of pictures from the night. Some would be smeared or have defective photographic emulsion and have to be rejected, but the good ones got labeled, put into the cabinet, and filed on my list. The next night we would review what had happened the night before, discuss the weather forecast, curse the encroaching moon, and start over again.
I found this exhausting, and I was the only one of the three of us actually sleeping at night.
The goal was to get three good images of each of the fifteen fields during the course of the month. Ideally they would betaken three nights in a row. My job was to examine each of the images and, as astronomers had been doing for two hundred years, look for the things that move.
Kevin and Jean must have been happy that the moon existed, since bright time was the only time that they got a few days off. But I was no fan of the moon. I became increasingly agitated as the month progressed from gray to dark to gray again and finally the bright approached. Invariably as the month was coming to an end we would be behind schedule owing to problems with the weather or problems with the photographic plates. I would count ahead the number of nights left before bright time commenced and almost always find that everything had to go perfectly or we would lose one of our fields. And every lost field meant that any planets out there in the sky suddenly had a huge place to hide. Our net would have holes. Near the end of the month, Jean and Kevin would invariably work overtime. I could do nothing except sit in Pasadena, stare at the moon, and fret.
Somehow, we managed. In two years of surveying the sky with the 48-inch Schmidt Telescope, we actually managed to get every image of every field we wanted except for one. We mostly beat the moon. Final score: 48-inch Schmidt, 239 fields; moon, only one field. Those 239 fields we had covered were only about 15 percent of the whole sky, but it was, we thought at the time, the right 15 percent. The moon and planets are all strewn across the sky in a giant ring encircling the sun, and we had looked at that ring—as well as a good bit above and below—for a period of about four months, or one-third of the whole ring. So while we had looked at a relatively small fraction of the sky, it was much of the interesting sky, and it was enormous compared to what had been previously examined. We hadn’t taken our net through the entire ocean, but thought we knew one of the whales’ major swimming grounds, and we had trawled it all.
Looking at vastly more sky than anyone else had ever looked at for large objects out in the Kuiper belt was so immensely exciting that I could hardly contain myself. I
knew
that there would be big discoveries, and having new pictures come in night after night after night
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