The
history of amateur astronomy is full of sky watchers who became entranced with
astronomy long before they reached majority.
My guess is that if you are an amateur astronomer, you were beguiled by the sky as child
or teenager too.
Alan
Craig was born in Oregon and his family moved to a California farm before he
was an adolescent. 1911, when he entered
his teens, was a fortunate year to have curiosity about the sky. Another teenager, Fred Leonard, a Chicago 15-year-old
promoted what was his local astronomy club in a national astronomy enthusiasts’
magazine, Popular Astronomy (PA). Leonard’s ambition was to make his Society
for Practical Astronomy (SPA) a national and even international
organization. Young Alan must have been
a PA reader and read Leonard’s
invitation to join the SPA. Craig wasted
little time and was an active member of the SPA by April 1912.
Alan’s
reports to two sections of the SPA show the breadth of his astronomical
interests. He contributed meteor reports
to Dr. Charles P. Olivier, the Meteor Section director beginning in 1912. Olivier wanted drawings of meteors’ paths
among the stars to disprove a mistaken popular idea about where meteors
originate from in the sky. In 1912 Craig
also sent estimates of stars’ brightnesses (technically called ‘magnitudes’) to
William Tyler Olcott who directed the Variable Star Section (VSS). ‘Variable stars’ are those whose magnitudes are
known to vary over time. Alan used a telescope with a light-gathering lens measuring
two-and-a-half inches (6.4 centimeters) in diameter to monitor them. Leonard and Olcott intended that the VSS
would record amateur observers’ magnitude estimates of these inconstant stars
and would then provide the data to professional astronomers who studied
them.
From
1912 through 1913, Alan plotted 253 meteor paths on maps of the stars for Dr.
Olivier. His interest in meteors waned
in 1913 in favor of watching the variable stars’ light shows. Perhaps he became more dedicated to variable
stars because one of his early variable star reports to Olcott received such an
appreciative response in a monthly column Olcott wrote in PA. After Alan submitted 100
estimates in September 1912, Olcott wrote, “Mr. Craig deserves a great deal of
credit for the excellent work he has done in observing variables in a short
time.” This may have been all the young
man needed to motivate many more contributions.
From 1912 through 1914, he reported 1700 magnitude estimates to Olcott.
We
don't know why Alan Craig ceased reporting to Olivier and
Olcott, but his brief career is like those of many adolescent sky watchers. They begin with a great deal of energy in
their observations, only to stop as suddenly as they began them. We can guess that in 1915, the 17-year old
was given more responsibilities for work around the family farm. Whatever the reason(s), Craig’s name stopped
appearing regularly in Popular Astronomy
after 1914. His last known report was to
Dr. Olivier in 1923 and 1924 when he furnished magnitude estimates of meteors
he had seen by chance while watching other objects through his telescope. Despite his disappearance from print a
century ago, Alan Craig, with a few other sky watchers, had a long-lasting
impact: they launched two organizations, Olivier’s American Meteor Society (AMS)
and Olcott’s American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO). Both survive today and amateur astronomers in
them contribute to scientific knowledge in the same ways Alan Craig did.
Richard
Taibi
April
9 and May 30, 2012
Copyright
2012
References
Olcott,
William Tyler, Annual Report of the AAVSO for the year ending October 10, 1912;
PA, vol. 20, pp. 609 and 615.
Olcott;
Annual Reports of the AAVSO for 1913 and 1914, PA, vols. 21-23.
Olivier,
Charles P.; 126 Parabolic Orbits by the AMS during 1911-1913, Publications of the Leander McCormick
Observatory, volume 2; Charlottesville, VA: U of VA; 1914, pp. 457-460.
Olivier,
C.P; Report of the AMS for 1923 and 1924, PA,
volume 33, 1925, pp. 240-241.