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.
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Looks like more than a “small” telescope to me…
July 17th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Um…yeah…if that gain of salt is 1,000 times brighter than all the others (as a supernova would be).