Sad news. The great, eccentric television astronomer, Sir Patrick Moore, has died. No one who ever saw his shows could forget how he explained the night skies, which will seem a little dimmer in his absence.
I find his personal life story quite moving, I should add. His fiancee was killed during the Second World War, and he never married or had a family, as a consequence, saying that she had been the only one for him. A pacifist who loved cats, he had a suspicion of European entanglement derived from the war years; and, though never officially educated as an astronomer was widely recognised as one of the major figures in his field in our time. His is an example of stoic amateurism and enthusiasm gone right - where a person loved something so much they could share it with the world.
I find his personal life story quite moving, I should add. His fiancee was killed during the Second World War, and he never married or had a family, as a consequence, saying that she had been the only one for him. A pacifist who loved cats, he had a suspicion of European entanglement derived from the war years; and, though never officially educated as an astronomer was widely recognised as one of the major figures in his field in our time. His is an example of stoic amateurism and enthusiasm gone right - where a person loved something so much they could share it with the world.
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| Man of the skies |
Comments
Going There
Of course it was a disaster.
The unbearable, dearest secret
has always been a disaster.
The danger when we try to leave.
Going over and over afterward
what we should have done
instead of what we did.
But for those short times
we seemed to be alive. Misled,
misused, lied to and cheated,
certainly. Still, for that
little while, we visited
our possible life.
Jack Gilbert
Chris Roseblade