In all, he found about 60 asteroids, or minor planets, or an average of one for every year of his life-a truly enviable record. But summer astronomy was thrilling and personal. How my father loved those long, black, friendly nights, when he could sweep the heavens, oh, so slowly, and carefully, hour after hour, with his comet-seeker. A lovely evening with a full moon was not a lovely evening to father. He wanted only a moonless, star spangled, black velvet night.
Comets are shy creatures and disguise themselves often as nebulae.
Even through father's powerful comet-seeker, they looked like fuzzy dots in a field of bright pinpricks. Not every summer could yield a comet, but, like fishing, the fun seemed to be in the fishing as well as in the catch. Days he spent grinding and polishing his lenses, or fishing for bass in Lake Champlain, but on dark cloudless nights, he fished for comets on the hill. With a little oil lantern he would wend his eager way over the stile and in and out the hammocks to set up his comet-seeker. This looked like nothing half so much as six feet of aluminum stove pipe, but it was really an expensive and balanced instrument, easily set on a sort of tripod.