“I think I’ll start with soup and sardines, please.”
The young Norwegian, who was a bit of a leg-puller, took a bowl of cream of tomato, and proceeded to empty half a dozen sardines into it. The others looked on in astonishment.
“Judas, the boy must be hungry,” said Jim.
Knut looked up, apparently in some surprise.
“You don’t eat sardines like this? Ah, then you don’t know the real way to eat sardines. Try it, you’ll like it.”
Then having created something of an effect, he added:
“I thought I smelled a skunk around just before I came in.”
“Should go well with that concoction you’re eating, Knut,” said Rogers.
When the laugh had died away, Jim asked:
“Did you hear about the skunk we had a fortnight ago? He de-gassed himself near the 200-inch air intake. Before anybody could stop the pump the place was full of the stuff. It sure was some hundred per cent stink. There must have been the best part of two hundred visitors inside the dome at the time.”
“Lucky we don’t charge for admission,” chuckled Emerson, “otherwise the Observatory’d be sunk in for compensation.”
“But unlucky for the clothes cleaners,” added Rogers.
On the way back to the 18-inch Schmidt, Jensen stood listening to the wind in the trees on the north side of the mountain. Similarities to his native hills set off an irrepressible wave of homesickness, longing to be with his family again, longing to be with Greta. At twenty-four, he was in the United States on a two-year studentship. He walked on, trying to kick himself out of what he felt to be a ridiculous mood. Rationally he had no cause whatsoever to be dispirited. Everyone treated him with great kindness, and he had a job ideally suited to a beginner.
Astronomy is kind in its treatment of the beginner. There are many jobs to be done, jobs that can lead to important results but which do not require great experience. Jensen’s was one of these. He was searching for novae, stars that explode with uncanny violence. Within the next year he might reasonably hope to find one or two. Since there was no telling when an outburst might occur, nor where in the sky the exploding star might be situated, the only thing to do was to keep on photographing the whole sky, night after night, month after month. Some day he would strike lucky. It was true that, should he find a nova located not too far away in the depths of space, then more experienced hands than his would take over the work. Instead of the 18-inch Schmidt, the full power of the great 200-inch would then be directed to revealing the spectacular secrets of these strange stars. But at all events he would have the honour of first discovery. And the experience he was gaining in the world’s greatest observatory would stand well in his favour when he returned home — there were good hopes of a job. Then he and Greta could get married. So what on earth was he worried about? He cursed himself for a fool to be unnerved by a wind on the mountainside.
By this time he had reached the hut where the little Schmidt was housed. Letting himself in, he first consulted his notebook to find the next section of the sky due to be photographed. Then he set the appropriate direction, south of the constellation of Orion: mid-winter was the only time of the year when this particular region could be reached. The next step was to start the exposure. All that remained was to wait until the alarm clock should signal its end. There was nothing to do except sit waiting in the dark, to let his mind wander where it listed.
Jensen worked through to dawn, following one exposure with another. Even so his work was not at an end. He had still to develop the plates that had accumulated during the night. This needed careful attention. A slip at this stage would lose much hard work, and was not to be thought of.
Normally he would have been spared this last exacting task. Normally he would have retired to the dormitory, slept for five or six hours, breakfasted at noon, and only then would he have tackled the developing job. But this was the end of his ‘run’. The moon was now rising in the evening, and this meant the end of observing for a fortnight, since the nova search could not be carried on during the half of the month when the moon was in the night sky — it was simply that the moon gave so much light that the sensitive plates he was using would have been hopelessly fogged.
So on this particular day he would be returning to the Observatory offices in Pasadena, 125 miles away. The transport to Pasadena left at half past eleven, and the developing must be done before then. Jensen decided that it would be best done immediately. Then he would have four hours’ sleep, a quick breakfast, and be ready for the trip back to town.
It worked out as he had planned, but it was a very tired young man who travelled north that day in the Observatory transport. There were three of them: the driver, Rogers, and Jensen. Emerson’s run had still another two nights to go. Jensen’s friends in wind-blown, snow-wrapped Norway would have been surprised to learn that he slept as the car sped through the miles of orange groves that flanked the road.
Jensen slept late the following morning and it wasn’t until eleven that he reached the Observatory offices. He had about a week’s work in front of him, examining the plates taken during the last fortnight. What he had to do was to compare his latest observations with the other plate that he had taken in the previous month. And this he had to do separately for each bit of the sky.
So, late on this morning of 8 January 1964, Jensen was down in the basement of the Observatory buildings setting up an instrument known as the ‘blinker’. As its name implies, the ‘blinker’ was a device that enabled him to look first at one plate, then at the other, then back to the first one again, and so on in fairly rapid succession. When this was done, any star that had changed appreciably during the time interval between the taking of the two plates stood out as an oscillating or ‘blinking’ point of light, while on the other hand the vast majority of stars that had not changed remained quite steady. In this way it was possible to pick out with comparative ease the one star in ten thousand or so that had changed. Enormous labour was therefore saved because every single star did not have to be examined separately.
Great care was needed in preparing plates for use in the ‘blinker’. They must not only be taken with the same instrument, but so far as possible must be shot under identical conditions. They must have the same exposure times and their development must be as similar as the observing astronomer can contrive. This explains why Jensen had been so careful about his exposures and development.
His difficulty now was that exploding stars are not the only sort to show changes. Although the great majority of stars do not change, there are a number of brands of oscillating stars, all of which ‘blink’ in the manner just described. Such ordinary oscillators had to be checked separately and eliminated from the search. Jensen had estimated that he would probably have to check and eliminate the best part of ten thousand ordinary oscillators before he found one nova. Mostly he would reject a ‘blinker’ after a short examination, but sometimes there were doubtful cases. Then he would have to resort to a star catalogue, and this meant measuring up the exact position of the star in question. So all in all there was quite a bit of work to do before he got through his pile of plates — work that was not a little tedious.
By 14 January he had nearly finished the whole pile. In the evening he decided to go back to the Observatory. The afternoon he had spent at the California Institute of Technology, where there had been an interesting seminar on the subject of the spiral arms of the galaxies. There had been quite a discussion after the seminar. Indeed he and his friends had argued throughout dinner about it and during the drive back to the Observatory. He reckoned he would just about get through the last batch of plates, the ones he had taken on the night of 7 January.
He finished the first of the batch. It turned out a finicking job. Once again, every one of the ‘possibilities’ resolved into an ordinary, known oscillator. He would be glad when the job was done. Better to be on the mountain at the end of a telescope than straining his eyes with this damned instrument, he thought, as he bent down to the eye-piece. He pressed the switch and the second pair flashed up in the field of view. An instant later Jensen was fumbling at the plates, pulling them out of their holders. He took them over to the light, examined them for a long time, then replaced them in the ‘blinker’ and switched on again. In a rich star field was a large, almost exactly circular, dark patch. But it was the ring of stars surrounding the patch that he found so astonishing. There they were, oscillating, blinking, all of them. Why? He could think of no satisfactory answer to the question, for he had never seen or heard of anything like this before.
Jensen found himself unable to continue with the job. He was too excited about this singular discovery. He felt he simply must talk to someone about it. The obvious man of course was Dr Marlowe, one of the senior staff members. Most astronomers specialize on one or other of the many facets of their subject. Marlowe had his specialities too, but he was above all a man of immense general knowledge. Perhaps because of this he made fewer
