John Dobson, Telescopes and Amateur Astronomers

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a small stake in immortality?  On January 21, 2014, a man died who has that toe-hold on life after death.  John Lowry Dobson made a difference in this world.  If you are a star-gazer you know his name.  Dobson wanted astronomy to be available to all.  Then he made it so.

John Dobson was born on September 14, 1915 in Beijing, China.  He was the son of Methodist ministers.  His family soon left the unrest in China and settled in San Francisco.  Eventually three things happened: Dobson graduated from the University of California at Berkley with a degree in chemistry; he became a hippy ahead of his time; he revolutionized the study of astronomy.

Despite being the son of missionaries Dobson described himself as a, “belligerent atheist.”  Then he attended a service at the Vedanta (Hindu) center in San Francisco, decided they had a message he liked, and spent the next 23 years as a Ramakrishna monk.  In the monastery he was given the task of reconciling religious thinking with science.   A task he relished.

Dobson became hooked on telescopes the first time he looked at the moon and felt, “…as if I were coming in for a landing.”  Modern reflecting telescopes use a mirror to reflect and focus light at the bottom of a large tube, then send that light to another mirror and lens at the front of the scope—the bigger the mirror, the better the magnification.

Dobson made one significant design change in telescopes that allowed the average person to become a real astronomer in his own backyard.  Because of what came to be known as the, “Dobsonian” mounted telescope, any person with an interest in astronomy and a modest disposable income could make a fine instrument of almost any size.  The amateur could now watch, study, learn from and contribute to our knowledge of the stars. 

Using a moveable box similar to a gun mount, Dobson’s design allowed thin glass mirrors to focus on any object in the sky.  These are mirrors a dedicated amateur can shape and polish himself, or buy for a tenth of the cost of pre-Dobsonian mirrors.  Depending on the diameter of the mirror (typically 6” or 8” in the stores) one can get a detailed look at the moon, the rings of Saturn, or the moons of Jupiter.  With a bigger mirror you can view deep sky objects like star clusters, nebula and galaxies.  We live in a crowded universe and watching the deep sky is like time travel with your eyes.  All thanks to Mr. Dobson.

My husband, a typical amateur astronomer, built his Dobsonian in about 10 feverish days after getting a 17 ½ diameter (that’s big, folks!) mirror from Coulter optical for $600 back in the 70’s.   With this homemade scope Tom has done original research on the variable star, S S Cyngea.  We routinely look at double stars, nebula, and galaxies.  We watched the impact marks left by the Swift-Tuttle comet when it hit Jupiter, and the multi-colored, double tails of Hale-Bopp comet in 1997.  Star charts, right ascension and declination are now part of my vocabulary.  All made possible by John Dobson and his, “every man” telescope. 

Dobson, himself, never made a dime off his design.  He refused to patent it and freely made the designs available.  A monk, a theoretician, and a rebel, he even challenged his own scientific community on the Big Bang Theory insisting that something can’t come from nothing.  He was an ambassador for science.

Doing astronomy helps me keep the faith.