DEVOTED TO THE STARS

摘要

SHE KEPT HER TELESCOPE in a wooden box in the basement. Phoebe Waterman Haas had observed hundreds of stars with it over the years, plotting light curves as their brightness flickered. Her grandson, Thomas Haas, saw the refractor nestled away just once, when he helped her retrieve it one night in 1966. He was 11 years old. "I remember it like it was yesterday," says Tom. "We stayed one evening after dinner. My brothers and sister were there and she brought out this beautiful brass telescope. She put it in the back yard and showed us the stars and the moon." Waterman Haas died the next year, and it was only decades after, when Tom began to research his grandmother's life, that he discovered she knew just a little bit more about stars than the names of the few she taught him that night.