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When I was in Sturgis, Michigan, a retired scientist, a pioneer in his field, talked me into getting the largest reflector telescope I could afford. I got a 10 inch, which was 3 times better than his 6 inch reflector (Meade). Some thought it was 10 inches long. No, it stood about 6 feet tall, the mirror being 10 inches across.
We had great fun finding the Messier objects like the Crab Nebula. Photographs look better because the film is saturated with light. Nevertheless, there is a peculiar joy in guiding a scope from one celestial landmark to another until the mirror holds a nebula or galaxy. I used to show people the rings on Saturn, craters and mountains on the moon, the satellites of Jupiter.
My favorite was to get people to see the second and third smaller galaxies held by the gravitational pull of the largest one, the Andromeda Galaxy. I will have to post that photo later.
Jastrow was quoted in the Yale Divinity magazine as saying, "Evolution is like saying a tornado went through a junkyard and produced a working model of a 747 jet."
Jastrow was an astrophysicist.
