We all look to the stars, but what separates a professional stargazer from the rest of us? What does an astronomer actually do?
Well, imagine you have one night to investigate the strange deaths of stars five billion lightyears away. You're on top of the tallest mountain in Hawaii, in charge of a telescope that costs a fortune to operate, and that telescope has stopped working. What do you do?
Emily Levesque turned it off and turned it on again.
To be an astronomer is to journey to some of the most inaccessible corners of the globe, braving mountain passes, sub-zero temperatures, and hostile flora and fauna. Not to mention the pressure of handling equipment worth tens of millions. It is a life of unique delights and absurdities, and one that may be coming to a close. Since Galileo, astronomy has been a fount of human creativity and discovery, but soon it will be robots gazing at the sky while we are left to sift through the data.
In The Last Stargazers, Emily Levesque celebrates an era of ingenuity and curiosity, and asks us to think twice before we cast aside that sense of wonder.
