Hobby-Eberly Telescope – C.M. Mayo's Book Notes & Convos

BY C.M. MAYO — April 4, 2022
UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).

This blog posts on Mondays. In 2022 first Mondays of the month are for Texas Books, posts in which I share with you some of the more unusual and interesting books in the Texas Bibliothek, that is, my working library.
> For the archive of all Texas-related posts click here.
P.S. Listen in any time to the related Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project.

The end of March 2022 marks the 16th anniversary of this blog, after which point, until further notice, I will be posting approximately two Mondays a month. The posts on Texas Books, the writing workshop, my own work, and a Q & A with another writer, will continue, each posting every other month and, as ever, when there is a fifth Monday in a given month, a newsletter.

Long before smartphone apps, before television, before electricity, yea verily, before mechanical clocks, our ancestors looked to the ever-present, ever-changing vault of the heavens. Because of light pollution however, in most towns and cities the night sky does not look the way it once did.

It so happens that the subject of my book in-progress, Far West Texas, is one of the darkest places in North America. In part this is simply because of its lack of water, and therefore low population, but it’s also thanks to “dark skies” policies and state legislation to protect it from light pollution (read more about the the whys, wherefores and history of these policies at at the website of the International Dark Skies Association). Not by happenstance, Far West Texas is also the home of one of the world’s most important astronomical observatories: the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis. In the most remote places in Far West Texas, if you find yourself outside on a clear night, you can not only see the Milky Way; it can seem the whole sky is a blanket of stars close enough to touch.

As one born in the second half of the 20th century, it took me a long while to appreciate how shockingly much of my culture’s relationship to the sky has atrophied. I’ll have a lot to say about this in my book; but for now, in this blog post, here are some of my go-to “stars and sky” books in my working library:

Paul Bogard’s The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light I would recommend to anyone and everyone. Bogard doesn’t say much about Far West Texas per se, but never mind, it’s a brilliant, joyous book, entertaining, informative, and thought-provoking throughout.

Telescopes gather light— and the technology behind some of them is astounding. An astronomical telescope is, in fact, a time machine, for it allows us to see light originating thousands, millions, and more years ago. West Texas Texas Machine is but one of an ongoing river of books on this subject, but it’s a good one, and the one I happened to have bought on my first visit to the MacDonald Observatory back in 1998.

Here is a batch of sky & stars books from my working library:

If you would like read more on the subject of our relationship with sky, and on seeing it not with gee-whiz technology, but with your own eyes, I would especially recommend astronomer Thomas Hockey’s How We See the Sky: A Naked-Eye Tour of Day and Night. After reading it, I had a whole new awareness of the sun and the moon and the planets and the stars.

I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.