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It is an honor and a pleasure for us to feature guest blogger, Dr. David Levy, noted author, astronomer, Shakespeare scholar, champion of the planet Pluto, and discoverer of 22 comets, either alone or with Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker
Dr. Levy was a co-discoverer of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 in 1993, which collided with the planet Jupiter in 1994.
Among his many awards, Dr. Levy won a 1998 News & Documentary Emmy Award in the "Individual Achievement in a Craft, Writer" category for the script of the documentary 3 Minutes to Impact produced by York Films .
Skyward—
October 2018
If you build
it…
“If
you build it,” said the voice, “he will come.” In eastern Iowa near the town of
Dyersville, near a well-kept farmhouse, lies a regulation baseball diamond in the
midst of a cornfield. This is the field
of dreams from the 1989 movie. On the
beautiful Sunday afternoon of September 9, Jeff Struve and I drove down to
visit the site as part of the Eastern Iowa Star Party he had so well
organized. With impact crater specialist
Jennifer Anderson and her husband David, we saw where one of my favorite movies
was filmed. Dr. Anderson had just
delivered a stunning and lively lecture about her impact crater research at
Winona State University’s geosciences department.
The
theme of Field of Dreams revolves
around baseball. But even though I am a
baseball fan, the movie’s influence on me was not about the sport but about the
dreams. It is about a dream I began to
have in the fall of 1965 just as my interest in the night sky was advancing by
leaps and bounds. That fall, two
Japanese comet hunters, Ikeya and Seki, discovered what would become the
brightest comet of the 20th century.
I first saw Comet Ikeya-Seki’s lovely tail rising out of the St.
Lawrence River late that October, and I have never forgotten it.
Two
months later, I began my own program of searching for comets. It had three goals, to search for comets and
exploding stars (officially referred to as novae, to discover a comet or a
nova, and to conduct a research project on comets and novae. Over the course of my life I have now
discovered 23 comets, and when I co-discovered the comet that collided with
Jupiter, I really felt as if I dipped myself in magic waters. And the research
part, which connects to poetry and the sky, became my 1979 master’s from
Queen’s and my 2010 doctorate from the Hebrew University. Along the way, I have also made two
independent discoveries of novae.
When
I visited in September, the house and field looked exactly as they were in the
movie. The picket fence in front now has
a sign that says “if you build it.” The
second part is left off. I interpret its
absence as indicating that not all dreams come true. Maybe yours will, maybe it won’t. But it is about the dream, whether it is baseball,
the night sky, or anything else. At the
close of the film Ray Kinsella asks, “Is
there a heaven?”
“Oh
yeah,” his Dad replies. “It’s the place dreams come true.”
And
if somehow your dream does come true, you could add the words of Ray’s skeptical
brother-in-law:
“When
did these ball players get here?”
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| House at Field of Dreams, David Levy |
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| Field of Dreams, David Levy |
