G A R Y W. K R O N K ' S C O M E T O G R A P H Y
|
Robert Burnham, Jr. |
|
|
|
[Cometography.com wishes
to thank Tony Ortega, for granting the permission to include his biography on
Robert Burnham, Jr. on this web site. In addition, Ortega supplied an
addendum to this story on 2003 December 12, which is at the bottom of the
page.] Sky Writer
Stargazers revere Arizona Robert Burnham Jr.,
creator of the most complete, practical, inspirational book ever written
about the night sky. But like so many people of genius, he would spend his
last years alone and destitute.
BY TONY ORTEGA The old man who sold
paintings of cats in Balboa Park entered San Diego's Mercy Hospital on March
9, 1993. He was dying of congestive
heart failure, the result of a heart attack that he'd suffered weeks earlier. Although he was only 62,
his years in the park had prematurely aged him. He wore a beard, and his skin
was tanned by his exposure to the sun. He was thin. He suffered from several
ailments. A blood clot in his heart. Gangrene in one foot. Pneumonia in his lungs.
For days he lingered, but doctors decided not to take the risk of operating
on him. At 6:03 p.m. on March 20,
the man's heart stopped beating. Days later his body was
sent to a military cemetery for cremation after a check on his social
security number revealed that he had served in the Air Force. A marble
headstone bearing his name was placed on a wall among the names of other
cremated veterans at Point Loma's Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery. No one noticed that the
name on the headstone was misspelled, the result of a clerical error on the
man's death certificate. No one at the hospital or
at the cemetery knew the man, and no family members attended the placement of
his cenotaph. He was just a
weather-beaten, penniless man who sold paintings of cats in Balboa Park who
had grown old and died. Years before he was a
destitute painter, Robert Burnham Jr. had inscribed the universe. Writer,
astronomer, finder of comets and asteroids and collector of ancient
artifacts, Burnham was a singular Arizonan. He was a scientist whose
work at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff helped advance the understanding of
the sun's neighborhood in space. He was an author whose name
has become so familiar to some readers it has become a sort of shorthand,
like Audubon to birders, Hoyle to card players, Webster to poor spellers,
Robert to parliamentarians. More than 30 years after
its first publication, Burnham's Celestial Handbook: An Observer's Guide
to the Universe Beyond the Solar System
remains a sort of real-life hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, a compendium
with something to say about nearly every cosmic destination worth visiting. Part travel guide, part
history text, part encyclopedia, it's like a handheld natural-history museum
of the universe. And for decades it's held a grip on the imaginations of most
people who ply the night skies with telescopes, people who yearn to travel in
space and know that they can, any dark and clear night. Reading Burnham's massive,
three-volume work is like reading the notes of an adventurer who has spent a
lifetime studying the treasures of a lost civilization: Its 2,138 pages are
loaded with tables of data, technical passages and illustrations interspersed
with historical arcana and ancient poetry. And all of it is meant as an
incentive for the reader to recover those treasures by merely looking upward. It is rarely compared to
other books because there simply is none other like it. No other popular work
approaches its utility and completeness; few other scientific texts contain
its sense of wonder and even spirituality. Despite Burnham's abiding
fame among skywatchers, few people knew much about the man himself. Partly,
that was because of confusion over another man with the same name. An editor
at a science magazine, the other Robert Burnham published frequently during
the same period that the Celestial Handbook gained popularity, causing readers to assume that
the two were one and the same. But Robert Burnham Jr.
published almost nothing else besides his Handbook, and shunned publicity. He led an extraordinary,
but ultimately tragic, life. He also was a bundle of contradictions. Burnham was a recluse, and
yet he craved public recognition. He devoted years of labor to extraordinary,
disciplined work, and yet he was incapable of staving off poverty. He was a
brilliant writer who had an uncommon memory, yet words failed him in social
situations. He knew the night sky like
few other people have, but was oblivious to earthly concerns. He felt betrayed by his
publisher and others who had benefited from his years of remarkable work, and
he sank into depression and bitterness at the same time his reputation
soared. His books are revered by
tens of thousands, yet he died alone and unnoticed. She had little idea he was
still so admired. For many of them,
professional and amateur alike, Burnham's books are among their most prized
possessions. The Celestial Handbook, Burnham's legacy, began life as a project he meant
only for himself, a young Prescott shipping clerk with only a high school
education. But one night in 1957, he
made a discovery from the front porch of his parents' house that would bring
him to the attention of state media and Lowell Observatory's astronomers. It also piqued the interest
of an ambitious Arizona senator with his eyes on the White House who made a
point of visiting the clever young man a few weeks later. That visit would help
launch Burnham on a remarkable trajectory which would end, eventually, in
penury and anonymity. On the night of October 18,
1957, eager to use the newest of his telescopes despite its lack of a proper
mount, the 26-year-old Burnham propped up its tube against the porch railings
of his parents' Prescott home. As on other nights, he used
the instrument to scrutinize tiny portions of the sky, doggedly searching for
items to include in a massive survey of the heavens that he had taken upon
himself. And it's likely that as Burnham
slowly examined multiple-star systems in the constellation of Cetus the
whale, inside the house his mother sat at her desk, writing letters. She was
part of a dying breed: people who develop reputations for writing letters to
newspapers. Lydia Burnham voraciously devoured papers and fired off missives
about politics and religion--"She was a fanatical nonbeliever,"
says her daughter Viola Courtney--which were regularly printed and won her an
army of far-flung correspondents. She had gained particular influence
with the editors of her hometown paper, the Prescott Courier, and in the coming days, she would use it. That night, at 10:30 p.m.,
Burnham's telescope found a smudge of light where there was not supposed to
be one. It was a comet, a celestial
interloper speeding past the Earth in one of the nearest approaches of a
comet in 50 years. Although it was his first
such discovery, Burnham knew what to do: He made a phone call to Lowell
Observatory and sent a telegram to Harvard University. The astronomers at Lowell
didn't try to confirm Burnham's find until the following night. But by then
clouds had scudded in over Flagstaff and would remain the next night as well. Instead, a Swiss
observatory acting on the sighting of Paul Wild, a comet hunter in Bern who
had spotted the object a few hours before Burnham, grabbed credit for
confirming the existence of the object. Fortunately, because Burnham had sent
a telegram to Harvard, where the world's arbiters of astronomical discoveries
were located, Burnham's observation was credited as well. Comet Latyshev-Wild-Burnham
would eventually gain its third name when a delayed report from a Russian
astronomer--who had actually beaten the other two--arrived weeks later. Today, about 30 new comets
are found each year, mostly by professionals in the course of their work. A
handful, however, are snared by amateurs. While a few of those discoveries
become news items--such as Phoenix resident Tom Bopp's 1995 co-discovery of
the spectacular Comet Hale-Bopp--most go unnoticed by the nonastronomical
world. In the 1950s, fewer comets were found, and amateurs played a greater
role in spotting them. But even then, most discoveries did not excite the
media, especially for an object such as Burnham's which could not be seen by
the unaided eye. Arizona newspapers,
however, hailed Burnham as a hero. Another reason for the
attention was surely Lowell Observatory's promotion of the story. Perhaps
embarrassed that his colleagues had not confirmed Burnham's find themselves,
Lowell's Henry Giclas mailed a congratulatory but apologetic letter to the
amateur on October 24. The observatory then notified the press. American paranoia about
Russian superiority may also have boosted coverage. At least one news story
presented Burnham's ingenuity as a sort of Yankee comeback to Sputnik, the
Soviet satellite which was then orbiting the Earth and unsettling the
stomachs of hawkish Cold Warriors. Particularly, one of the
most hawkish of all. "The Senator was quite
intrigued to learn that someone with a home-built telescope had beaten the
professionals to a 'major astronomical discovery,' as he put it,"
Burnham would write years later. "But he was really fascinated by my
account of the optical test of my telescope mirror. Here I was, measuring the
curve on a mirror to an accuracy of a few hundred-thousandths of an inch,
with equipment made from an old tin can and a razor blade." Goldwater was genuinely
intrigued by Burnham's feat, but he couldn't help but make political hay out
of the encounter. His comments were dutifully reported the next day: "It
is exciting that Burnham . . . could use the talent God gave him, and not
depend on doles from the federal government to make such progress," said
the conservative icon. The senator surprised
Burnham by offering him a telescope owned by his late uncle, Morris
Goldwater, who had once been Prescott's mayor. It was a valuable refractor
which the elder Goldwater had purchased in 1882. Burnham gladly accepted,
promising to refurbish the old instrument. Only three months later,
Burnham found another comet with his homemade telescope. It was not named Comet
Goldwater. It is known as Comet
Burnham 1958a. Burnham's meeting with
Goldwater is preserved in yellowing newspaper clippings assembled in a faded
green photo album. Other pages commemorate five of Burnham's six comet
discoveries. Burnham put the album
together himself and annotated it. It's now in the possession of Viola
Courtney, his sister, who lives in north Phoenix. She has many of Burnham's
things, and one by one she brings out the pieces of his life to share them. She resembles him. The same
narrow face, dark hair and thin build. She is 64. The two of them were born
in Chicago: He on June 16, 1931, she two years later. The Burnhams relocated
to Prescott in 1940 out of concern for their mother's health. Robert Sr., a
General Electric employee, followed three years later after he found work at
the Iron King mine. Both of their parents were
outgoing and gregarious, Courtney says, which always made her wonder where
her brother obtained his introversion. "At school, they
nicknamed him 'Professor,'" she says. (His family's nickname for him,
however, was "Cosmo.") He excelled in class, but didn't make
friends easily. Mostly, the two of them kept to themselves. Courtney's
brother's powerful imagination could keep her entertained for hours. "He
and I were real close as kids. He drew up a scroll with magic islands when he
was 11 and I was 9. 'Where do you want to go today?' he'd ask." As teens, Courtney says,
the two drifted apart. She spent more time with friends, while Burnham became
increasingly absorbed in myriad interests--astronomy, geology, music, ancient
history and drawing among them. "He had a couple of
good friends, but otherwise he kept to himself," she says. He had constructed a
laboratory where he kept his growing collections of coins and rocks and
artifacts, and where he performed experiments. By the time Burnham entered
high school, astronomy had become his main interest. But he told his sister
that he didn't plan to make a profession of it. "He didn't want to do
the math. He was an observer. He really didn't want to go into all of the
mechanics of it," she says. Consumed by interests but
with no practical ambition, Burnham graduated from Prescott Senior High
School in 1949 and retreated to his laboratory. "Back then it wasn't
so automatic that you go to college. As for Robert, there wasn't money for
it, anyway," Courtney says. So, for a couple of years, he
did nothing, which was fine with his father. "Who's going to pay me
for anything I can do?" Courtney remembers her brother saying. The war in Korea would
force him to act. Faced with being drafted, he enlisted in the Air Force in
1951. The airman first class became a radar technician, traveled to exotic
locales like Saudi Arabia, and, after his four-year stint, returned to the
laboratory attached to his parents' house. "He was given an
honorable discharge and then came back to Prescott to go back to doing
nothing," Courtney says. Until, that is, his mother
heard about an opening for a shipping clerk at Thunderbird Fashions, a
Western clothing manufacturer. "They checked
applicants for school records, so he got it hands down. He was their best
shipping clerk, ever," Courtney says. "It didn't make sense. He was
so capable. I told him he should have stayed in the military. It fit him
because the military took care of the mundane decisions and allowed him free
time to pursue his interests." But Burnham seemed content.
His nowhere job kept his mother happy and put change in his pocket, and his nights
were free for the passion that was taking up more and more of his time: his
Celestial Survey, as he called it. He had conceived of it
shortly after he returned from his assignment in the Air Force. Using a small
refractor telescope, he became frustrated that the star charts available at
the time came with so little information about all the intriguing symbols
dotting the maps. Here were thousands of
objects of interest in the sky--multiple star systems, stars that changed
brightness, clusters of stars, nebulae and distant galaxies--and little
information about any of them. So Burnham began making his own notes about
them, organizing the notes by constellation and recording them in loose-leaf
notebooks which grew and multiplied. By the end of 1957, he was
using a larger telescope of his own construction, he'd made news as the
discoverer of a comet, and his survey had grown to fill six notebooks and
1,200 pages. And that's when, despite
his prediction to his sister, he indeed became a professional astronomer. Henry Giclas has seen many
people come and go in the 56 years he's been associated with Lowell
Observatory. Yet the 87-year-old still goes to his office there every
weekday, and it's no trouble for him to remember the details of hiring Robert
Burnham. "Anybody that spends a
lot of time out looking for comets, first of all he has to have a lot of
patience, and he has to want to take the time to do it. And so I just figured
that anyone who would spend that much time would make a pretty good observer
for a routine job." An article without a byline
which appeared February 3, 1958, in the Courier described how Burnham got the post: "H.L.
Giclas, of the Lowell Observatory, passing through Prescott, took Burnham to
lunch, and invited him to visit the Flagstaff observatory over the following
weekend. Soon after he returned home, he received the offer of the position
in the observatory. The camera studies he will make are expected to take a
two year period, Burnham said. . . . He will begin his work on Feb. 10." Courtney remembers her
mother telling Burnham: "If you turn this down, you're crazy." "I'm not going to turn
it down," he answered. Then, Giclas says, the
entire deal nearly fell through. "We had a bit of
trouble about that article in the Courier. His mother, you know, was a kind of jackleg
reporter for it," Giclas says. "He damned near didn't
get the job. We thought he'd written that article." They changed their
minds, says Giclas, after a contrite Burnham convinced them that he hadn't
written it. "It was his mother.
When I offered him that job, his mother went bonkers and wrote up a big story
about how he was going to do a proper motion program at the Lowell
Observatory when the guy didn't even know what a proper motion was." It wasn't the first time
the observatory had hired a skilled amateur on the cheap for repetitive work
that better-paid professionals might have scorned. In 1929, a young Kansas
farmer sent the observatory detailed drawings of Jupiter and Mars that he'd
made with a homemade telescope. Lowell astronomers were sufficiently
impressed that they hired the young man, named Clyde Tombaugh, to help with
an ambitious, but tedious, project. The search for Planet X. Fortunately, Tombaugh
proved to be more than simply a hired hand. On February 18, 1930, Tombaugh
brought glory to Lowell Observatory by discovering the only major planet
found this century. It was named Pluto. (But
Lowell was not vindicated: Pluto was much too small to be his predicted
Planet X.) Now, in the late 1950s,
with Tombaugh no longer associated with the observatory and his planet search
long over, Henry Giclas had conceived of a way to make additional use of
Tombaugh's labors. He would take a series of
long-exposure photographs of the sky, each on a glass plate corresponding with
one taken by Tombaugh 30 years earlier. In that time, some of the stars would
show movement. The closer ones would, anyway, just as when motorists see
objects that are closer whiz by faster than distant ones. Identifying that
movement--called "proper motion"--was the best way to determine
which stars were closest to the sun, valuable data for scientists who wanted
to know what kind of stars a typical portion of the galaxy--namely our
own--contains. Soon after the project got
under way, Giclas learned about the Prescott amateur who had discovered a
comet, and decided to hire him. But only, Giclas says,
after Burnham's mother apologized to the observatory for writing the unsigned
article in the Courier. "I couldn't hold it
against Burnham," he says. In 1959, with the
continuation of his graduate studies in astronomy jeopardized by a lack of
funds, Norm Thomas packed up his family of four and left Berkeley,
California, for a job at Lowell Observatory. There he was paired with
Robert Burnham Jr., who for the past year had been working on the
proper-motion survey with astronomers Giclas and Charles Slaughter. Day after day, Thomas tried
to trip up his taciturn and brilliant partner. Now that the project was
running smoothly, Giclas and Slaughter turned it over to the two young men
who lacked advance degrees in the field. Both Burnham and Thomas
were told not to expect the survey to last longer than three years. Instead, it would last
another 20. "Henry [Giclas] was
quite good, but he was a little impatient with it," Thomas says, adding
that because Giclas wasn't a "blinker" by nature, he wasn't taking
the project to its full potential. To explain what he means,
Thomas descends into the basement of one of Lowell Observatory's oldest
buildings where thousands of glass plates in white envelopes line the walls
of a cramped room. Against one wall is a
contraption called a "blink comparator." The machine held two glass
plates at a time, one dating from the 1930s search for Planet X, the other
exposed by Burnham or Thomas themselves. Corresponding postage-stamp-size
regions from each plate were projected onto a screen, first from one plate
and then the other, back and forth, clickety clack, endlessly. With the plates lined up
correctly, the stars in each portion projected on the screen would hold
still. Even in the 30 years between exposures, most stars seemed fixed in
their positions and showed no movement. But occasionally, in a particular
field on the plates, Burnham or Thomas would notice a star make a subtle
leap. Thomas shows how he would
mark the star with a dab of India ink, hoping that Burnham had missed it.
After Burnham, using another, fresh plate, had made his own search, the two
of them would compare notes, tallying up the moving stars, particularly the
ones that the other had missed. "That did provide
something fun. Who would miss something really neat. It was a
competition," he says. By the time the program
ended in 1979, they would identify 9,000 high-motion stars as well as several
comets, 1,500 asteroids and 2,000 new white-dwarf suspects--degenerate stars
with incredible densities--as well as thousands of variable stars which they
simply had no time to study. Thomas describes it as a
merry-go-round of activities. While one of them blinked during the day, the
other would expose new plates at the 13-inch Pluto discovery telescope at
night. Plates had to be developed, leaping stars identified and tabulated,
and finder charts had to be made for the high-motion stars and white dwarfs
so other astronomers could recover them in the sky. Both of them were also
expected to help out by giving tours to visitors. Somehow, the two of them
found time in that demanding schedule to spend occasional nights simply
touring the night sky with a telescope. Thomas says those nights are among
his fondest memories. "Bob was great to be
with. I'd be the student. The stuff he had in his memory was just
amazing." Like others, Thomas
describes Burnham as exceedingly shy and reclusive. Only a few times, in
their close 20-year collaboration, did Burnham make the trip down from Mars
Hill to spend an evening at the Thomas home. Burnham himself lived in a
cabin on the observatory's property. He'd moved into the rent-free home in
lieu of a raise after his first year of work, and turned the place into a
virtual museum. Viola Courtney's daughter
Donna made frequent trips from Prescott and later Phoenix to visit her uncle.
Often she would find him sitting in a rocking chair on pine needles outside
his cabin, enjoying silence. Inside, the cabin was a
fascinating clutter. There were rocks that glowed under ultraviolet light.
Ancient coins and other artifacts of long-dead cultures. Fossils of
trilobites and sharks' teeth. And on nearly every wall, from floor to
ceiling, books. Donna says she was careful
to travel alone to see him. With people he knew well, Burnham relaxed and
could be quite talkative. If Donna brought someone her uncle didn't know,
he'd clam up. Once, she made a boyfriend
wait in the car for a half-hour while she spent time with Burnham. Burnham overcame his
shyness sufficiently to have several girlfriends during his Lowell years.
Viola Courtney and Thomas remember one woman in particular who seemed to
bring Burnham nearly to the point of sociability. "I remember that she
was blond and curvaceous," says Courtney. "She had visited the
observatory on a trip. He would give talks to the tourists, and she was
impressed by him. She was so taken, he arranged for her to have a summer
job." Thomas remembers that
Burnham was similarly taken, and that one time the shy astronomer gushed:
"We're really together on our philosophy." Burnham was so far gone,
Thomas says, he didn't mind being seen holding hands with the girl. The curvaceous blond
herself, now Professor Julie Lutz of Washington State University, says she
had just graduated from San Diego State University and spent the summer of
1965 at Lowell Observatory as a 20-year-old intern before beginning graduate
work at the University of Illinois. "Bob was very, very,
very shy. But he was fascinating. His place was filled with fascinating
stuff," she remembers. "He was a pleasant person, but, you know, he
didn't talk to too many people at Lowell. "He was like
Tutankhamen's tomb. Once you got to know him, you opened a passageway and
then a lot of treasures would appear." She laughs when she's told
of Burnham's comment about his philosophical girlfriend. "I am a big reader of
books. At that time, I think I'd read a lot of philosophy and history. I was
probably pretty intellectual for my age. He was probably impressed that he
could talk to me." She lived in a cabin near
Burnham's, and remembers walking hand in hand through the woods with the
astronomer. "Yeah, and that was
about it," she says with a chuckle. Donna Courtney remembers
walking around and around a long table at Lowell Observatory which was
covered with papers. The year was 1966. She was
only 6 years old, but like the rest of the family, as well as Norm Thomas and
his children, she had been enlisted by her uncle to circle the table with
pages in her hands. Collating hundreds of
copies of the first of what would be an eight-volume, 2,000-page book seemed
like an eternal task, and sticks in the memory of everyone who helped. Burnham had decided to
publish his Celestial Handbook
himself. His employment there gave
him access to the mountains of information in Lowell's library, as well as
the images on the thousands of glass plates he worked with every day. His survey quickly became
more than simply the observational notes of an amateur astronomer. Burnham
could now include more scientific depth and thousands of intriguing
photographs. He also injected material related to his other interests,
including photographs of ancient coins that carried astronomical themes,
discourses on the lore of constellations, even thousand-year-old Chinese
poetry about the sky. He knew it was becoming a
remarkable work. "I tried a few of the
larger astronomical publishers," Burnham wrote later. "Some thought
that there really wasn't much of a demand for anything like that. Others said
that there was no way to finance such a thing. One publisher said that they
would have to hire someone full-time for a couple of years just to check and
edit the material. That would be a requirement, they said, if they were to
publish. At a cost which would make the project impossible, of course." Thomas says Burnham was
also disappointed by Lowell Observatory's official position regarding the Handbook. Namely, that there would be
no position. "I knew him a lot
better. I knew how careful he was. Other people didn't know that,"
Thomas says. Other Lowell astronomers
were also apparently unaware that Burnham had sought outside assistance to
check the accuracy of his data. Giclas, however, saw the
books as an irritation. "We had a great
English amateur that published books and stuff, but the stuff he had in it
was wrong. His name was Patrick Moore. In later years, he learned enough to
at least try to put the facts down straight. But Burnham quoted Moore as many
times as he quoted Henry Norris Russell or some other famous astronomer, you
know. And that was the trouble; Burnham didn't know the difference between
someone who knew something and someone who didn't." After Burnham finished
collating the loose-leaf, typescripted books, Giclas says he gave them a
cursory look. "I pointed out several errors in them. He may have changed
some. I don't know whether he did or not." Thomas says Burnham
resented his colleagues' reaction. "They were afraid that it would be
full of errors, and then it turned out to be better than 80 percent of the
stuff [published about astronomy] that comes out. The good reviews quieted
some people down. That, and the fact that it became quite famous because of
the lack of errors." No review carried more
weight than that in the June 1966 issue of Sky & Telescope, the field's primary popular journal. The reviewer,
Robert Neil Stewart, found himself referring to a recent French book with a
narrower scope as the only thing he could compare to the Celestial
Handbook. While somewhat guarded in
his praise (he only had the first, 218-page volume), Stewart did seem
impressed by the sheer size of the projected work: "Mr. Burnham's manual
promises to be about 10 times more inclusive than its strongest
competitor." And it was in English, to
boot. "The greatest merit of the Celestial Handbook is its up-to-date
and detailed physical information. . . . I know of no other place where all
this information can be so readily obtained." Yet, as Stewart and later
reviewers noted, the Handbook was much more than an assemblage of data. He
complimented Burnham for his frequent essays and other written interludes. Thirteen years later, the
same magazine would review the books again, and this time the writer's tone
would be less restrained. Burnham's Celestial Handbook had become a classic. By 1976, Burnham had
secured a deal with Dover Publications, Inc., in New York to republish the Handbook in three paperback volumes. Two years later, the
books appeared. As Sky & Telescope's second reviewer, Kenneth Hewitt-White, noted in
1979, wherever people dedicated to exploring the night sky gathered, they
would solve riddles about what they saw with a simple question: "What
does Burnham say about it?" Owners of small telescopes
found it difficult to go where Burnham had not gone before. The Handbook could guide the enthusiast from his or her backyard
to the far reaches of the galaxy, explaining such concepts as stellar
evolution en route. The Handbook looked different from other books, with its many
hand-drawn diagrams and the typescript pages preserved from the
self-published edition. It also contained passages
that were pleasantly out of place in a book of science, such as the following
statement in a section on cosmology, which tries to explain what our universe
is doing here: "Oriental philosophers
speak of the 'Tao,' the all-pervading intelligence of the Universe, never
personified or regarded as a 'being' of any sort; such a concept seems vastly
more appropriate to the Universe we actually live in than do the grossly
anthropomorphic and marvelously tortuous theologies of Western
thinkers." Burnham knew that such
passages would draw scorn from astronomers who held more mechanistic views.
He would write later that he expected to come in for criticism for including
them. But he was determined, he wrote, to make the books more than a dry list
of data. Courtney, who is now
executor of her brother's estate, says that the 1966, loose-leaf Handbook edition had eventually paid for itself, but Burnham
was happy to be done with publishing the thing on his own. Burnham wrote in 1982,
"The memory of those days still causes me to leap forth from my pillow
with a loud cry. I have this nightmare, you see, where I'm trying to publish
the Britannica from my kitchen
table. . . ." But even as he began to
enjoy the benefits of wider publication--and regular royalty checks--Burnham
learned that Lowell Observatory planned to fire him. Norm Thomas says that by
1979, one of the proper-motion survey's goals had been met: After
photographing small patches of the sky year after year, they had eventually
worked their way to the north celestial pole, near the star Polaris. There was still some sky
near the southern horizon that they hadn't gotten to yet, Thomas says, but
the National Science Foundation refused to fund the project for an additional
three years. Burnham and Thomas had
blinked their last plate. "The only thing the
observatory could offer him would be, well, a janitor's job or something
where he was supervised. And he didn't want that kind of a job, so that was
that. That's all that was left that he was capable of doing," says Henry
Giclas. Norm Thomas' son Bruce, who
was in high school at the time and had become close to Burnham, says that
Burnham's decaying relationship with Giclas also played a part in that
decision. "There was a building
resistance between Burnham and Lowell [Observatory], partly because they felt
he was using their resources for his Handbook. As it became more popular and people talked about
it, Henry Giclas got more standoffish about it. There was a big lack of
communication about the use of Lowell's resources. Perhaps if Bob had been a better
communicator he could have convinced the observatory that it was a positive
thing for it. "As the years went on,
he was fighting with Lowell. He wanted to add to the public tour. He wanted a
sound system and a choreographed slide show. He wanted a gift shop. But
Giclas and others felt that it was a research institute that didn't need to
give tours." Thomas says Burnham wanted
to take on more of those responsibilities, and hoped that he could make it a
full-time job. "Burnham brought his
own stereo system. He brought blinds for the rotunda so a slide show could be
put on, all on his own time and money. He felt, as the years went on, that
Lowell didn't care about that. Yet, ironically, 10 years after he had left,
they adopted all those ideas." In April 1979, Burnham
received official notice that his employment would end. The observatory gave
him plenty of time to prepare: His job would not end until December of that
year, and Lowell offered help finding him further employment. Norm Thomas was exasperated
by Burnham's refusal to prepare for his termination. "For years I'd kind of
dogged him about investing in some land, some cheap land around here. And he
never would do it. . . ." "In 1979, when he knew
he was going to lose his job, I told him, 'You should start moving into
something right now that would get you independent of rent.' I recommended a
mobile home." Thomas says Burnham did
nothing, and in December 1979, he packed up his collections and books, rented
a large apartment in Flagstaff, and severed his association with Lowell. Rent
payments would soon stretch his resources despite the royalty checks he was
receiving from Dover. Giclas says that inability
to plan characterized Burnham. "He was just that kind of a character. He
didn't seem to worry about anything. I don't know what you can attribute it
to. "Burnham did a very
good job when he was told exactly what to do and what to look for. That was
great. When that ended, we just didn't have any place for him. Which is
sad." Only later would his colleagues
and kin learn what a lifeline the observatory had been for him. Once it was
cut, Robert Burnham Jr. would never be the same. I'm sitting here as I
have on countless nights before, using as a reference work your Celestial
Handbook, and reflecting as always upon what a marvelous book it is. I cannot
begin to tell you how much pleasure these volumes have brought me, not to
mention their great value as sources of information. I should like, as a
token of my appreciation, to send you a copy of the new edition of my book
Galaxies. . . . I hope you'll enjoy the book at least a fraction as much as I
have yours. --letter from Timothy Ferris, dated February 6, 1982 Timothy Ferris, author of
the 1981 National Book Award-nominated Galaxies and the 1989 Pulitzer Prize-nominated Coming of
Age in the Milky Way, says that
he's used Robert Burnham's books for decades, but, when he's asked about
them, realizes that he's never talked to anybody about them. Like others, Ferris
professes an admiration for Burnham's writing while knowing little about the
man himself. He did, however, correspond briefly with Burnham in 1982. "I remember his being
a rather disillusioned man, primarily over his publisher's handling of the
book," Ferris says. The Berkeley journalism professor emeritus also
remembers Burnham's anger over his firing. "Lowell Observatory
was famously broke, and a lot of astronomers were supporting themselves with
real estate speculation. I guess from his perspective he had worked mightily
and had not been rewarded accordingly. "I can certainly vouch
for the book; it's a terrific book. His historical focus ensures the
longevity of it. He had the good taste and judgment that sets this type of
work apart from others in its field. He had the good judgment, for example, not
to focus on flash-in-the-pan research that would go out of date
quickly," Ferris says. As the '80s progressed,
Burnham's books continued to gain popularity as his own fortunes began a
steady nose dive. Bruce Thomas remembers that
Burnham was initially optimistic when he left the observatory. He received
royalty checks in the mid-four figures every six months, he had begun another
writing project--a fantasy novel--which was taking on epic proportions, and
he'd rededicated himself to painting and other interests he'd put off. But that optimism, Thomas
says, didn't mask his bitterness at Lowell's termination of him. Burnham also complained
about how Dover Publications marketed the Handbook. Its audience was a narrow one, Burnham knew, but
he told Thomas that readers were willing to pay more than the
$8.95-per-volume cover price. He also believed that Dover was unnecessarily
holding up a Japanese translation of the book--he knew that Japan, with its
large astronomical community, could be a ripe market. But the hardest hit for
Burnham to take was the deep discounting of the Handbook in 1981. As incentive to join, the Astronomy Book
Club began offering the complete set for only $2.95. Burnham told his sister
that his royalties that year dropped "like a paralyzed buzzard." Other complaints, Thomas
says, were less rational. One of Burnham's gripes against Dover was its lack
of interest in his fantasy novel. Burnham also admitted to
Thomas that Dover had made numerous advances on his royalties to help him out
when money was short. Oddly, Dover Publications
spokeswoman Rosa Lopez declined to speak about Burnham or the history of the Handbook, asking that New Times submit a list of written questions. A list was
sent, but Dover did not respond. Bruce Thomas says he became
increasingly concerned about the aging astronomer. Years earlier, when
Burnham still lived and worked at Lowell, Bruce Thomas and other children of
Lowell astronomers had made Burnham's museum-like cabin something of a
clubhouse. Thomas credits Burnham and his words of advice for improving his
performance in school and his later success as a mathematics teacher. But after 1980, Thomas
says, their relationship was reversed, and he found himself handing out the
advice. Although only a recent high school graduate, Thomas tried to help
Burnham with practical matters that seemed to mystify him. "I talked to him about
getting unemployment. But he never did it. That would mean going to an office
and dealing with people, and he had problems with that." Burnham's shyness had
become a pathology. Burnham yearned for the
recognition that his books increasingly generated, but he could not bring
himself to seek out the people who could give it to him. He couldn't even face an
interviewer. Burnham had interviewed
himself for the article. These beliefs--an Eastern
approach to nature and a disdain for organized religion and materialism--were
long-held and characteristic of Burnham. Newer was the sense of frustration
that the Handbook, considering
its scope and popularity, reaped so little compared to books on astrology and
other nonsense that commanded million-dollar advances. Such frustrations about
money, Bruce Thomas says, would increasingly consume Burnham. Viola Courtney says,
"He probably would have had opportunities for public speaking, but
didn't pursue it. He had a delightful sense of humor." Although Burnham
could hardly converse with someone he didn't know well, he had, in 20 years
of giving tours at Lowell, developed the ability to speak comfortably before
a crowd. Courtney says she wondered why her brother couldn't have found work
at a planetarium or some other science-related facility where he could share
his immense knowledge. But Burnham would shrug when she suggested it. Michael Bartlett:
"Everyone could see Robert's potential except for Robert." Bruce
Thomas: "He was a very different Bob than the one I had first met. The
one who had been optimistic about creativity and the world." Burnham became obsessed
with money-making schemes. Courtney says her brother lost money in at least
one pyramid scheme during the early 1980s. He also tried several times to
sell items door to door using a unique marketing technique: an army of
children. Buying jewelry cheaply from mail-order houses, Burnham would enlist
Thomas and other teens to sell the items for him. "He probably thought
that if he used kids, they could sell it, because he was no salesman,"
Thomas says. Burnham also began selling
off the collections of coins, meteorites, jade and other items that he'd
spent years collecting. "He was a connoisseur. These were all very
high-quality things," Thomas says. He remembers one object in
particular, a silver Roman coin stamped with an owl. It was the pride of his
collection, Thomas says, but Burnham parted with it for $800 to pay for rent. "He was getting very
stressed and upset. He started to grasp at straws--he'd talk about treasure
hunting," Thomas says. What began as a diversion during his years at
Lowell--hunting for reputed treasure with a metal detector--turned into a
fetish as Burnham's bank account dwindled. "In some of the final
years that I knew him, he would say things like, 'If I get evicted, I don't
know what I'm going to do. Become a bum, I guess, and lose all of this
stuff.' "For a year, I gave
him 20 dollars a week to help him with groceries," Thomas says, and he
knew that two other sons of Lowell astronomers gave Burnham money as well. In December 1983, Burnham
spotted a reference to himself in an issue of Sky & Telescope. Columnist George Lovi wished that more authors
would show the dedication and drive of Burnham and several others. Burnham
had to respond; his letter appeared five months later. "Lovi . . . lamented
the fact that so few people display the dedication needed to accomplish such
a large project. This is hardly surprising when the rewards offered by our
society can be so small. "I have devoted over
two decades of my life to astronomy, and my Celestial Handbook has been called a modern classic. I am the
discoverer of six comets, not to mention thousands of new proper-motion
stars, which my colleagues and I found during a 21-year proper-motion survey
at Lowell Observatory. As a result of all these accomplishments, my income
has rarely risen much above the poverty level. . . ." If Burnham, who kept so
assiduously to himself, was unsure what impact his books had had on others,
he could have had no doubt after the responses to his letter began to arrive. Wrote one devotee: "I
am an extremely grateful and dedicated admirer of your Celestial Handbook, and when I saw your address in Sky &
Telescope, I felt compelled to
write my appreciation. . . ." And from other letters:
"Could you be so kind as to send me your autograph, perhaps with a short
message if you could spare a few moments. I would always proudly keep it with
the Handbook. . . ." "I would like to offer
a very large and heartfelt thank you for this wonderful set of handbooks. My
dog-eared set is always with me when observing. . . ." "The text is beautifully
written and is almost as enjoyable as actual observation. As a chemist, I can
think of no comparable work done or possible in my field. . . ." "Your Celestial
Handbook is considered the Bible
among all of my associates. . . . My set holds a revered place in my library.
. . ." "I am on my second set
of these books--the first set wore out from heavy use. In my library of over
1,200 books, this set is my most prized possession. . . ." One writer, Louis Lyell of
Jackson, Mississippi, wrote Burnham about an observatory he had helped build
at a private school, and about the school's need for an astronomy teacher.
The job seemed custom-made for Burnham, who enjoyed talking to young people
about science more than anything else. Lyell says he never got a
reply. Viola Courtney can't be
certain what day her brother disappeared. At the end of August, Norm Thomas
called to tell her that police were conducting an investigation and had
searched Burnham's apartment. Courtney and her family
traveled to Flagstaff that weekend. In her brother's mailbox, she found a
letter she had sent to him on July 17, and judging from the pile of
newspapers on Burnham's porch, that's about the time that he abandoned the
place. Norm Thomas and Courtney
say it looked like the apartment had been robbed, but selectively. Missing
were many small items that seemed valuable--shiny artifacts and coins,
mostly. Otherwise, the apartment
was filled with the things that had always been there, as if Burnham had left
suddenly. Burnham's landlord
threatened to have the contents of the apartment auctioned unless Courtney
paid his back rent. She did. And the rest of the weekend, Courtney and her
daughter Donna and Michael Bartlett moved the collections and books to a
storage unit. "Robert had sold
things, but there was still a lot of stuff in the apartment. Books, books and
more books," Courtney says. "Huge books,"
says her daughter. It was a place, Courtney
knew, between Flagstaff and Oak Creek Canyon where her brother searched for
treasure. Perhaps he had gone there and something had happened, she reasoned. Courtney and Bartlett went
there but found nothing. It was locked, and the
metal detector was inside. There was no trace of Burnham. Flagstaff police searched
the area in vain. Burnham became another name on a nationwide missing-persons
list. And the people who knew
Burnham began to get used to the idea that he might be dead. Then, about 11 p.m. on
September 9, seven weeks after Burnham had disappeared, a Newport Beach,
California, police officer noticed a disheveled man walking aimlessly on the
beach. He asked the man's name.
"Robert Burnham," the man answered. Burnham was wearing a
long-sleeve shirt and pants, but his feet were bare, and they were covered
with second-degree burns from exposure to the sun. He was taken to the
hospital for treatment, then released to a shelter. "He had a beard, he
seemed tired. His feet were horrible. But it was him. He acted like he always
had," says his niece, Donna Courtney. She lived in San Bernardino at the
time, and she retrieved him from the shelter. Then her mother drove out to
bring him home to Phoenix. She installed him in her
one-bedroom mobile home in north Phoenix and nursed him. It took several
weeks for his feet to heal. She asked him what had
happened in the seven weeks he had been missing. He had gone to Mexican
Pocket to look for treasure, and he had fallen asleep, Courtney says as she
narrates the tape. "Then he woke up. And
he thought it was very early in the morning, the time of day when vision is
very poor. He looked toward the place where he had left the van, and he saw
two life-sized elephants, and some figures of people moving around the
elephants. Then the elephants faded and he saw a woman carrying a child. And
that figure faded and then he saw a cat, and he said to himself, 'At least I
know that cat is real.' But as the cat came toward him, it sort of shimmered
and just dissolved. Then, he said, everything went crazy." Burnham told her a tale of
fragments of visions: his hand magically going through the door of a car;
traveling on a city street in another van; in a hotel room high in the sky
with a big window without glass; a tremendously loud sound that forced him
toward the open window; someone saying, "Let's go to the beach." But the moment he heard
himself say his name to the Newport Beach police officer, Burnham felt
normal. From that point on, he could account for his whereabouts. "He had no memory how
he came to Newport Beach, no idea of reality during the prior [seven]-week
period. All he remembered were the hallucinations," Courtney says. No one remembers Burnham,
who was 54 at the time of his disappearance, using illicit drugs of any kind.
Bruce Thomas says Burnham often spoke against their use. Says Michael Bartlett:
"The job at Lowell was virtually the only job he ever had in his life.
It took care of all of the mundane things in his life. Throughout that period
he didn't have to worry about the things he needed, and he had meager needs.
. . . But when that job ended, it cut the legs out from under him. Then
suddenly he needed to fend for himself. "If he had some kind
of mental breakdown, this is what precipitated it." She had other suggestions
as well. While she had come to Burnham's aid without question, as the days
wore on, her living situation became intolerable. Sharing her trailer with
her brother gave her no privacy, and Burnham never left the house. She
suggested he get a job, and she made that request stronger after his
semiannual October royalty check arrived. It was for only $300.
Burnham had taken so many advances in the past, there was hardly anything
left of his pay. Burnham did some
telemarketing from the trailer, but he hung his hopes on a check he'd been
waiting years for: royalties on the Japanese edition of his Handbook, which
had finally been published. Burnham told Courtney that
he expected a lucrative check in April 1986. Burnham became convinced
that the Japanese edition would finally change his fortunes. Then, the check arrived. It
was for $500. She shrugs. "Those
were my plans for him. But he didn't seem to have any plans of his own." Bartlett says, "At
this point, he didn't seem to have any zest for life left." "Perhaps he left
Phoenix because he was afraid I would keep pushing to get him some kind of
counseling," Courtney says, and she appears to battle feelings of guilt. Every weekend, Courtney
would visit Burnham at the mobile home. But early in June, Burnham left
without warning. She would learn that on May
30, 1986, Burnham had withdrawn the last $20 from his bank account. He left
with the money, the clothes on his back, and his social security card. When she noticed that
Burnham's royalty checks stopped coming to the trailer, she asked a Dover
employee if it was forwarding his checks. Yes, she was told. But Burnham had
requested that Dover not divulge the address. She never saw him again. The old man who sold
paintings of cats in San Diego's Balboa Park would line up early on weekend
mornings so that he could get a one-day vendor's license before they ran out. Then he would arrange his
paintings on a bench and sit down amid them. He wasn't much of a salesman. He
didn't hawk his wares. He simply waited for someone to come by and look at
them. During the week, he would
simply sit on the bench, alone. Or he would paint his cats. Workers at the nearby
Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater remember him. Dennis Mammana, the planetarium's
astronomer, remembers seeing the man sitting on the same bench, day after
day. When he's asked if he knew
the man was the author of Burnham's Celestial Handbook, Mammana replies: "He couldn't have
been. Robert Burnham, the man who wrote the Celestial Handbook, was an editor at Astronomy magazine at the time." When Mammana's told that he
has made the common mistake of confusing the two writers--that there were in
fact two Robert Burnhams, and the author of the Handbook had ended up sitting on a park bench outside his
planetarium--Mammana sounds dismayed. "Somebody had told me
that he claimed to be Robert Burnham. This is just incredible. I'm sure no
one believed him. I mean, you don't expect that someone in that condition
would be capable of producing such a work. The book is on every astronomer's
shelf. "What a resource he
could have been." Dave Amero remembers that
Robert Burnham was a very nice man who lived down the hall from him at the
Golden West Hotel, a residence hotel in downtown San Diego which, judging by
the people lounging in the lobby, is inhabited primarily by older men with
little income. Amero and Dick Frishkoren
are behind the hotel's counter in the center of a large lobby which hints at
a grandiose past long gone. Frishkoren is a snappy
dresser, and it's difficult to believe he's ever actually stayed in the
place. Amero, on the other hand, has dull eyes and a simple but
straightforward way of speaking, and it doesn't seem surprising that he's
lived in the hotel for 28 years. Both men remember Burnham
staying at the hotel several years, and the dates 1986 to 1993 sound right. "He said he was an
author and that he was working on a new book. He said something about
painting, and he spent a lot of time just sitting in the lobby," Amero
says. The hotel lies about a mile from Balboa Park. Frishkoren estimates that
in those years, Burnham would have paid about $200 per month to stay in the
hotel. Amero also remembers that
Burnham seemed ill. In the fall of 1991, Bruce
Thomas had relocated to San Diego. One day, he took a walk in Balboa Park
with two friends and found himself amid the weekend vendors. There were
performers of various types. Tarot readings could be had cheaply. And a man
sitting on a bench was selling paintings of cats. He seemed familiar, Thomas
thought as he walked past him. The beard threw him off, but then it came to
him: It was Robert Burnham. Thomas turned back to him. Thomas sat down with
Burnham and introduced his friends, telling them that this was the man he
mentioned so often. "It was awkward. My
friends sidled away while I talked to Bob for 10 minutes or so. He seemed
uncomfortable. He said that he'd been in San Diego on and off for many years,
and had liked it and decided to move there. He said he was just taking it
easy and was still getting checks from Dover." Thomas bought a painting
for $5. Twice more Thomas sought
out Burnham, visiting him in the park for brief conversations. He purchased
three more paintings. Then, a few days after Christmas,
Norm Thomas visited his son, and the two of them went to the park to reunite
the two old Lowell astronomers. "It was hard to tell
how Bob reacted to that. He was friendly and talked with Dad amicably. I
could tell that he was forcing himself to be upbeat," Bruce Thomas says. "They chatted for a
little, mostly about astronomy. Bob asked about Lowell." "Bob seemed happy
about that," Bruce Thomas says. Bruce Thomas would make
several more visits to the park looking for Burnham. In the summer of 1995,
Donna Courtney's husband, David Bastuk, came home with an assignment from
school. He was taking a night course to learn to be a private investigator,
and he was assigned the task of finding a missing person. So Courtney suggested that
he find her uncle. She supplied him with what she knew about him. A few days later, Bastuk
told her that he had done a search on Burnham's social security number, and,
according to a computer database, Burnham was dead. It would take Viola
Courtney another nine months to learn that Burnham had died in San Diego's
Mercy Hospital. She was slowed by a misspelled death certificate; a clerk had
typed "Burham." The certificate indicates
that Burnham was suffering from a host of ailments, all probably related to
the gradual deterioration of his heart. Dr. John Dodge, the physician listed
on the certificate, agreed to discuss Burnham's file, but then changed his
mind. There is no indication of
how long Burnham had suffered before he entered the hospital on March 9, or
what treatment he may have received before that time. Neither Dave Amero at
Golden West Hotel nor Dennis Mammana at Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater
remembers Burnham's needing to be hospitalized. The certificate's error was
preserved on a marble headstone placed on Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery's
columbarium, a wall covered with headstones in memory of servicemen and women
who had been cremated. Courtney requested a
correction. Today, Burnham's headstone reads correctly, but his name still
appears as "Burham" in the cemetery's index. Above his name on the
headstone is a cross, put there at the request of a San Diego County public
administrator assigned to oversee Burnham's cremation. It seems inappropriate. "No, I don't think of
the universe as some sort of ultimate monarchy being ruled by a cosmic king
on a throne, handing out written directives to his subordinates like a
commanding general," Burnham wrote in 1982. "Is there any religion
that invites doubt, skepticism, or a freely inquiring type of mind? The
scientist is free to say to his colleagues: 'Gentlemen, new findings have
made it necessary to revise some of our ideas.' Have you ever heard a
minister make such an announcement to his flock?" But Bruce Thomas cautions
against making too much of the symbol on Burnham's memorial. "I'm sure
if you asked him, he would tell you he wouldn't want any kind of headstone,
that it was silly. And he probably wouldn't care what you put on it." As she did while he was
alive, Viola Courtney has seen to her brother's needs. She is executor of his
estate and has wrestled with Dover Publications. Only recently, she says, did
the company pay for three years of royalties owed Burnham's estate. She has
waited more than a year for Dover to submit an accounting of the Handbook's sales in the final eight years of Burnham's life. Going through her brother's
papers, she also found that he had never withdrawn money from a retirement
plan. "It appears that he
had money he didn't know he had," Michael Bartlett says. "He needed
to be taken care of. He was like a brain in a bottle." Thirty years after its
first publication, the Handbook
remains a popular work. But the ineluctable shift of the Earth's axis in
space has made the positional data in the book sorely out of date. Other
material is well behind the latest scientific understanding. A year ago, a talented
astronomer who has worked both as an amateur and a professional began
considering taking on the task of updating Burnham's massive work. His name is Brian Skiff, he
works at Lowell Observatory, and he knows the night sky about as well as anyone
in the world. He says that before taking
on the challenge of producing a new, improved Celestial Handbook, he decided he'd better take another look at the
old one. "I was amazed. I think
it's just fantastic," he says. He has enough work to do
investigating asteroids. And when he's done with a night's observing, he
retires to his home: Burnham's old cabin. On a recent afternoon in
Lowell's library, he talks with Norm Thomas about the few times he met
Burnham. Thomas grins when Skiff
says that the most important work ever done on the 13-inch Pluto telescope
was the proper-motion survey. "I like to hear
that," Thomas says. "He is an amazing
person who I value my acquaintance with," Thomas says. The asteroid Bernheim is
currently 260 million miles from Earth, moving slowly eastward in the
constellation of Leo. phoenixnewtimes.com | originally published: September 25, 1997 Addendum: (received 2003
December 12) Shortly after my 1997 story
on Burnham appeared in the Phoenix New Times, Viola Courtney and I found additional papers in
her possession, including her brother's correspondence with Dover. Burnham,
it turns out, sold his Handbook
to Dover for a flat fee of $2,500 (His editors were so thrilled with the
third volume, which was not only the largest of the three but also largely
made up of previously unpublished material, they ended up paying Burnham a
$500 bonus when the project was finished, making his total for the book
$3,000.) However, the contract contained a rider which stipulated that
Burnham would receive 50 percent royalties -- Dover gets the other half -- if
any other company decided to publish the Handbook. It's no wonder he was desperate for the Japanese
edition to come out. I also found letters he had written to publishers in
Germany and the Netherlands, hoping that editions in German and Dutch might
be produced. The replies he received must have disappointed him: he was told
that German and Dutch amateur astronomers had no problem reading his English
version. It was only after the
Astronomy Book Club decided to publish their own copies that the contract's
rider kicked in and Burnham began to receive any royalties at all. In light
of this, Burnham's subsequent complaints about the meager royalties he
received from the ABC after they discounted his book seem less legitimate. If
it weren't for the ABC, he wouldn't have received another penny beyond the
original $3,000. (Well, except for the Japanese edition, which did bring some
small royalties as well.) Tony Ortega is now managing
editor of the New Times
newspaper in Kansas City, called The Pitch.
C&MS Home
| cometography.com | If you have any questions, please email me Sponsored by SpaceWeather.com |
