Science: Amateur & Amateurs

From a crude shelter in the middle of a cornfield near Delphos, Ohio, one evening last fortnight a 36-year-old amateur astronomer scrutinized the northern sky through his 6-in. telescope. Ten degrees from the North Star he spotted an unfamiliar object, below naked-eye visibility. At that location his charts showed no star, no nebula. Amateur Astronomer Leslie C. Peltier watched the tiny blob of light for five hours. In that time it moved sufficiently far to betray itself as a comet. To Harvard Observatory, whose officials knew his name very well, Peltier sent...

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