Sky & Telescope - April 2021 - 57

BOOK REVIEW by M. Nicole Nazzaro

Outstanding in the Field
THE LAST STARGAZERS: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers

Emily Levesque
Sourcebooks, 2020
336 pages, ISBN 9781492681076
$25.99, hardcover.
FOR COLLEAGUES HEADING out to
Kitt Peak for their next observing run,
astronomer Emily Levesque has a tip:
Watch out for the scorpions. The dry
Arizona air is great for observing starlight, but as this University of Washington associate professor notes, it's also
ideal for unexpectedly meeting up with
an unwelcome guest in the bathroom.
That scorpion encounter is just one
of the colorful vignettes Levesque shares
in The Last Stargazers. The book is a
celebration of modern-day professional
astronomy and the characters who populate it, wrapped in a profound meditation on the rapidly changing profession.
Today's astronomers still struggle with
sleep deprivation, unexpected cloud
cover, and the occasional hurricane
while observing at the lonely edges of
our planet, where they ﬁnd the clearest skies and strongest electromagnetic

Levesque shares her frontrow seat at the vanguard
of modern astronomy with
generosity and a true sense
of wonder.
signals. But they're just as apt to use
computers to control those telescopes
from home or ofﬁce as they search for
the literal secrets of the universe.
The Last Stargazers begins with all of
the gee-whiz amazement of Levesque's
youth as a kid astronomer, from
witnessing Halley's Comet in 1986
to announcing her intention to join

the profession - at age
seven. In middle school,
Levesque balances
ninth-grade math classes
and " seventh-grade
everything else " before
ultimately pursuing a
physics degree at MIT
and a PhD at the University of Hawai'i. From
her ﬁrst stint at Kitt Peak
(and that scorpion) to an
observing run in SOFIA,
the tricked-out 747 that
collects infrared data
from high in the stratosphere, Levesque
shares her front-row seat at the vanguard of modern astronomy with generosity and a true sense of wonder.
The book's title is a bit of a head
fake. Stargazing as a profession or a
hobby isn't going anywhere, of course,
but the ﬁeld of astronomy, like the universe itself, is expanding with greater
velocity than ever before. Levesque
highlights the technologies that, for one
thing, enable today's astronomers to
analyze terabytes of data. As Levesque
shows in her entertaining prose, it's a
long way from her family's Celestron
C8 to the 200-inch reﬂector at Palomar.
It's tempting to characterize this
book as a straightforward memoir of a
young astronomer on her way up the
academic ladder, weaved into a history
of the scientiﬁc development of the
profession, but The Last Stargazers digs
deeper. Between stories of scientists
trapped in prime focus cages, accidentally smashing data-rich glass photographic plates, or licking those plates
to identify the silver halide-coated side
that captures photons arriving from
distant stars, Levesque reminds us of
just how far the profession has come,

particularly for women.
Legendary astronomer
Margaret Burbidge (who
died in April 2020 at age
100), denied a Mount
Wilson fellowship in
1955, posed as her
husband's assistant to
obtain precious observing time. Another giant
of the ﬁeld, Vera Rubin,
after decades as an
astronomer, experienced
her ﬁrst-ever night with
an all-female observer
team (at Las Campanas) only in 1984 -
the year Levesque was born.
It's ﬁtting that The Last Stargazers
concludes with Levesque's journey to
the construction site at Cerro Pachón,
where the formerly named Large Synoptic Survey Telescope is slated to achieve
ﬁrst light in 2021 on its way to mapping
the Southern Hemisphere sky continuously for a decade. The telescope is better known by its new ofﬁcial name: the
Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
The Last Stargazers is a book for any
serious astronomy aﬁcionado, and especially for students considering a career
in the ﬁeld. Levesque is a compelling
investigator and a deft writer of popular
science. She highlights the professionals who make exciting discoveries while
retaining the curiosity and capacity for
awe that led them to astronomy in the
ﬁrst place. This is a book celebrating science and stargazers, of which no doubt
Levesque will be anything but the " last "
of her book's title.

NICOLE NAZZARO is a writer based
in Edmonds, Washington. See her article
on a classic telescope's restoration on
page 24 of this issue.
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Sky & Telescope - April 2021

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