Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society » The Supernova-Spotting Savant

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May 2nd, 2007

The Supernova-Spotting Savant

Over the last 25 years, the evangelical reverend and amateur astronomer Robert Evans of Australia has discovered 40 supernovae and one comet, an all-time record among backyard star-gazers. What’s so remarkable about Evans is that he has done it with nothing but a small telescope and a savant-like memory of star fields that allows him to recognize when something new has appeared in the sky. Writes Bill Bryson in A Short History of Nearly Everything:

To understand what a feat this is, imagine a standard dining room table covered in a black tablecloth and someone throwing a handful of salt across it. The scattered grains can be thought of as a galaxy. Now imagine fifteen hundred more tables like the first one — enough to fill a Wal-Mart parking lot, say, or to make a single line two miles long — each with a random array of salt across it. Now add one grain of salt to any table and let Bob Evans walk among them. At a glance he will spot it. That grain of salt is the supernova.

* More: An interview with Evans.

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