John Lankford

Sir Dames South and the Cauchoix ObjectiveNicholas Der Bagdasarian, West Hartford, ConnecticutAS ASTRONOMERS from PalomarL Mountain to Stellafane know, the obsession to construct bigger and better telescopes has been a central theme in the recent history of astronomy. In the early 19th century, an...

FOCAL POINTThe Amateur Astronomer's "Vast Alliances"IN HIS JOURNAL for 1851, Henry David Thoreau recorded an event so slight that few people would have bothered to write it down. As he lay on his back under the night sky, he saw a star pass behind the stem of a tree, proving that the Earth moves,...

E. E.Barnard and the Comet-Seeker Hoax of 1891John Lankford, University of Missouri-ColumbiaIN THE 19TH CENTURY the spread of literacy and development of new technologies made America a newspaper-reading nation. By the 1880's and 1890's the great press lords vied with one another for readership. In...

Mystery on the Desert The Nazca LinesF ROM LIMA the Pan American High-way winds south along the Peruvian coast through a succession of river valleys until it reaches the sleepy town of Nazca, population 20,000. For the residents it is a farming center, one that was old before the Spanish arrived...