Signedon instrument: MICRONTA / SATELLITE SCOPE / Magnification 6X / field of view 12° / NO. 763 / Made in Japan
Inscribedunder the stand, hand-written: Fred L. Whipple
Historical AttributesThe Moonwatch telescope was designed to be inexpensive and easy to get so that it reached as many people as possible.
Operation Moonwatch was established before the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1957. Moonwatch was the brainchild of Harvard astronomer Fred L. Whipple. In 1955, as the recently appointed director of the SAO, Whipple proposed to establish a network of volunteer visual observers to track satellites expected to be launched by the US and Soviet Union as part of the IGY. Called "Moonwatch," it would eventually involve thousands of amateur astronomers around the world. When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 on 4 October 1957, SAO was one of the few agencies in the West ready to track the artificial satellite.
Primary SourcesKenneth Auchincloss, "Smithsonian Astronomers Keep Hectic Pace," The Harvard Crimson, Saturday, November 09, 1957; republished online here.
Constance McLaughlin Green and Milton Lomask, Vanguard: A History (Washington, DC: NASA, 1969), chapter 6; available online here.
ProvenanceFred Whipple, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA.
Related WorksW. Patrick McCray, "Amateur Scientists, the International Geophysical Year, and the
Ambitions of Fred Whipple," Isis 97 (2006): 634–658.
W. Patrick McCray, Keep Watching the Skies!: The Story of Operation Moonwatch and the Dawn of the Space Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).