The famous barograph, now in its new home at Jarnac Obvservatory. Photo by David H. Levy.

It wasn’t.  The following Wednesday I was yelled at and physically pushed out of the building.  I decided that day to resign my entire interest in astronomy, comets and all.  But that morbid feeling didn’t last long.  Instead I quickly resumed all my activities, and some ten years later, while working on my master’s degree at Queen’s, wrote to Isabel Williamson to ask how she was doing.  She replied that she was fine, and invited me to call on her on my next visit to Montreal.  Although she never apologized to me,  these visits became a staple of all my Montreal trips for the next two decades, and her indication that all was well, until her death in 2000.  We did become good friends at last, I successfully nominated her to receive the Royal astronomical oSociety of Canada service award, and successfully proposed that the Center’s Observatory be named after her.  To close this interesting chapter, during a recent visit the Montreal Centre decided to give me the precious barograph, which stands atop my bookcase in a place of honor. 

I should have told this story during my talk, but I did not.  Instead I limited my remarks to the happier times that marked, and still do mark, my long comet hunting career. 

On Wednesday, December 16, I gave a second talk entitled “The Night Sky in the Times of William Shakespeare.”  It is an early version of a talk that I am building that will describe my thesis and my latest research into the sky of a time long ago.  During this talk, I shared with my audience the idea that Shakespeare was interested in virtually everything, and was quite an expert in many fields, including the night sky.  He likely saw the supernovae of 1572 (when he was 8, the same age at which I observed my first meteor, and the supernova of 1604, and several of the bright comets that came by including the comet of 1577, the comet that led Tycho Brahe to conclude that comets were farther away than the Moon.  And no doubt he saw the 1605 near-total eclipse of the Sun in London as he was finishing up King Lear.

The idea that Shakespeare was a kind of 16^th century amateur astronomer sounds esoteric, but it is probably true.  If he were somehow to return to us now, I would like to imagine him sitting at a pub arguing CCDs and astronomy with other people!  I also visualize him peering through Explore Scientific’s 14mm eyepiece, and saying “Wow!  Unbelievable!” just as the telescope operators, and the kids, did last week.