The Guide

Thursday, September 21, 1961, page 11 (of 16)

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They've Got It A Barbershop Mirror With A Billion-Mile Reflection

By JOE C. MORRIS Correspondent Robert Vern Arnold and his wife Louise are amateur astronomers. And most any clear night you will find them in the drive-way of their home, 525 Navarre Ave., setting the sights of a home-made, 10-inch telescope on Saturn, Jupiter or some far away star. The cosmic-conscious couple live alone. Their two daughters have married and moved away. But they share the universe together — through a telescope. One evening last week they let me take my first long look into outer space. I saw the pea-size planet of Saturn, with a "wedding" ring around it — both brilliant in their matching whiteness — move across the black-velvet background of the heavens. Nudging the telescope ever so slightly I saw Jupiter, which is 11 times larger than earth, bright as a full moon and 500 million miles away. Arnold waited patiently until I had my fill of the firmament then said, "I don't do as much observing as I used to. I get my kicks out of making the telescopic mirrors and in seeing how quickly I can produce one." He swung the stove-pipe "scope" around on its equatorial axis, unscrewed the mirror and held it in his hands. It was a piece of pyrex glass, fraction less than two inches thick, 10 inches in diameter, concave — to a center depth of 95 thousandths of an inch — and coated with aluminum. He is one of approximately 12 Gableite members of the Southern Cross Astronomical Society in Miami. And he's helped many of the members get their start by showing them how to make a $17.50 home-made mirror do the work of a $200 factory job. "When you look at the sky with your naked eye," he said. "the stars appear not to move. But they are moving. And so are we. The earth is moving all the time — 18 miles per second — and it takes a year and a quarter-day to travel its 581,666,000 mile orbit around the sun." As telescope mirrors increased in size, from very small to 200-inch Arnold said, man saw more and more of what he had already seen. The universe contains uncountable millions of galaxies and each contains billions of stars, planets and moons. It's estimated that 100 million galaxies can be seen with the 200-inch telescope and that it would take 200 years to map what has been seen so far. "The earth is a part of the Milky Way galaxy," he said, "traveling 250 miles per second in space. There is neither north-south-east-or west, nor up or down. But our position is approximately one-third of the way from the center to the outer edge." Louise Arnold is as interested in astronomy as her husband. She scanned the sky with a practiced eye and observed. "There's so much going on out there in space we never tire of looking and talking about the things we see. And we like to share it with people who are interested." Arnold was a farmer near Rockford, Ill., until he was 35. Then he heard everyone was getting rich in Florida and decided to do the same. He soon found, that as far as he was concerned, the boom was a bust . . . so he became a barber. During the deepest depression, rather than return north, he cut hair for 25 cents a head. "I was the only two-bit shop in Dade or Broward County then. One day I cut 60 heads of hair trying to make a little extra money for a birthday gift for my wife." ROBERT ARNOLD AND TELESCOPE

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