JSTOR

Happy Islands: A Personal Remembrance of Gene Shoemaker

Received 1997 December 5; accepted 1998 January 15

In ancient mythology, the daughters of Hesperus, the brightest “star” we call Venus, lived on islands of spectacular beauty. They guarded their islands from all intruders, from Earth and from sky. Although I first learned about the Hesperian islands from the world of English literature, they surged to life when I began my association with Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker. For many months beginning in 1989 and ending in 1994, we met at our little 18 inch telescope at Palomar Observatory to help fulfill Gene's hope of assembling a catalog of asteroids and comets that could someday pose a threat to Earth. For seven nights each month, Palomar Observatory was definitely one of Gene's happy islands. I liked to think of that beautiful place as our own Hesperian Isle, with Gene and Carolyn working hard to guard Earth against cosmic invaders.

Many astronomers have memories of Gene Shoemaker, and geologists have other memories. In a sense, when Gene died so tragically in an auto accident several hundred kilometers north of Alice Springs, the world lost not one but several Gene Shoemakers. The Australian geologists lost the man who had done more than most to uncover the crater imprint on what he called the terrestrial stratigraphic column, the long and winding story of the Earth as told in pages of rock. The Apollo astronauts lost the teacher who showed them how to explore a new and different world. Most planetary scientists thought of Gene as the foremost in their field. Flagstaff lost one of its most famous residents. And most important, Carolyn lost her husband, daughters Christy Woodard and Linda Salazar and son Patrick lost their father, and in‐laws and grandchildren suffered an incalculable personal loss.

Australia was one of the happiest of the happy isles for Gene and Carolyn. The July to September geologic expeditions to Australia offered an opportunity for Gene and Carolyn to go back to their crater research. For most of each 3 month expedition, they would study and travel by day and sleep under the stars at night. That tradition goes back to the start of Gene's career, when he was working on his Princeton Ph.D. dissertation, a task that turned out to be the first scientific demonstration that a crater was the result of an impact from space. In 1997, there are about 130 confirmed impact features on land around the globe—40 years earlier, Gene confirmed the first one, at Meteor Crater near Flagstaff. For Flagstaff residents, Gene personified Meteor Crater. He led people on countless tours into the depths of the massive hole in the ground carved out in 7 seconds some 50,000 years ago by an iron‐rich Apollo asteroid on its last orbit. Meteor Crater is another of Gene's Hesperian isles.

In 1961, Gene confirmed another impact site, this one the Ries basin, a 27 km wide structure in southern Germany. “By the light of the setting Sun,” Gene recalled his first look, “we looked at the shock‐formed rocks that had been supposed to be volcanic. I took one look at these rocks with a hand lens: no question these were impact rocks!” The next morning the Shoemakers turned tourist, and visited St. George's Cathedral in Nördlingen. The whole massive cathedral was built of a local rock that was filled with suevite, a mineral formed from the shock of an impact. I suspect that the Ries became another happy Hesperian isle when, years later, the couple returned there to receive the Ries Cultural Prize.

For most of us, Gene Shoemaker became famous during the Apollo Moon landings. As the geologist who taught the astronauts what they might expect when they landed on the Moon, he was also called upon to explain the Moon's long impact history to a television audience of millions. Through all his enthusiasm in front of the cameras, it was hard to see that Apollo represented the greatest disappointment of his life. Since 1948, he dreamed of being the first geologist on the Moon. But as NASA was about to select the lunar astronauts in 1963, he developed Addison's disease, which shut down his adrenal cortex. He knew he would never make it to the Moon. Years later he would still dream of walking on the Moon, using his well‐honed geologist's skills to study the regolith of a distant and tempting world. The Moon was a Hesperian isle, but not the happiest one. In 1994, as team leader for the Clementine Moon mission, Gene did get to salvage some of that dream from a distance.

Gene reached the pinnacle of his geologic career through the tools and methods of astronomy. From 1973 to 1994, his sky search, in later years called the Palomar Asteroid and Comet Survey, resulted in the taking of some 26,000 films of the night sky. Virtually all of these were taken with Carolyn. This effort catapulted them to the discovery of 32 comets and many asteroids.

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Fig. 1.— Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker on 1997 March 23, 4 years to the night after their joint discovery with the author of comet Shoemaker‐Levy 9. (Photograph by Joan‐Ellen Rice.)

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The Palomar story, as I would learn after I joined the team in 1989, was a cacophony of adventures. On one windy night at that observatory, Gene and Carolyn and I began our night of comet and asteroid searching. The cold wind was blowing so hard that we tried to keep the telescope pointed east, and out of the wind. As the night progressed, our search program called for a field far to the north, so we had to brave the gale. Although I tried to keep the telescope steady, the thin metal shutters at the top caused it to shake like a sail. Then Gene had an idea. For the next exposure, he stood precariously on the top of an elevating chair and held the shutters steady. Perhaps, we hoped, Gene's balance and strength would hold the telescope steady enough. I swung the telescope into place. As Gene's chair rose several feet, he stood on it to reach the top of the telescope. I peered through the eyepiece at the guide star, which was dancing about like a firefly. All was ready: I pulled the lever and the shutters slowly opened. As Gene grabbed onto them, the shivering guide star settled down. It was still moving around, but not as much. For the next few minutes the wind howled as Gene held onto the shutters with his hands and to the chair with his feet, trying to keep the scope steady and himself from tumbling off the chair. Meanwhile I tried gamely to keep the guide star centered. “Is this exposure absolutely necessary?” Carolyn asked.

By now the noise was so loud that we could hardly hear our own words. “IS THIS EXPOSURE ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY?!” she repeated.

“YES!” Gene hollered back, his voice still difficult to hear through the pounding wind. We imagined his thought after that: “You never know what's in the field if you don't shoot it.”

About 45 minutes later we had to repeat the acrobatic exposure, but then we turned the dome to the east and continued observing in the more sheltered areas. As Carolyn began scanning the developed films, she noticed a faint fuzzy object moving across the sky. Crossing the very field we had gone to such an extent to photograph was a new comet that became known as Shoemaker‐Levy 7.

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Fig. 2.— Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker watching a tidal bore on the St. Croix River, Nova Scotia, Canada, on 1997 July 2. (Photograph by Roy Bishop, editor of Observer's Handbook, Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.)

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It was Gene's nature to be forceful, impatient, and wanting to get things done yesterday. He was a bull in a china shop, but he was always careful never to break the china. With his friends, colleagues, and family, he dealt with great care and affection. For all of us who knew him, Gene was more than a friend. He took an active interest in our lives and our careers, and never listened with just half an ear. He devoted his full attention to what we had to say to him.

It was not enough just to tell the world about the importance of cosmic impacts. The impact of comet Shoemaker‐Levy 9 with Jupiter in 1994 was a triumphant confirmation of Gene's ideas about the role of impacts in our solar system. As Neil Armstrong said at the White House on 1994 July 20, “Gene got one of his own comets to deliver spectacular celestial fireworks.” After all he tried to teach us about the importance of impacts in the solar system, Nature itself sent the comet to strike Jupiter just to show that Gene had it right.

Gene's legacy is in his scientific message, but also in the kind of man he was, a kind of man for whom the happy Isles of Hesper, safe from the ravage of incoming comets and asteroids, offer a goal worthy of his time. Can we imagine Gene, with jeans, field boots, and maybe for the occasion a bolo tie, heading off to those isles, like Tennyson's Ulysses: