A Special Moonwatch Feature by One who was There

A Personal View of the Moonwatch Experience in 1957

Anna Hillier

I joined the Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston with the hope of making my own telescope.

Our club was asked to design a Moonwatch scope since we were based at Harvard College Observatory. The scope would be for observing the first satellites that were expected to be launched during the International Geophysical Year. The older members completed 12 scopes prior to July 1957.

I joined the Moonwatch team for Cambridge, Massachuse tts at the urging of Ed Knight and others. It was an easy commute to headquarters as I worked and lived in the nearby towns. The Harvard College Observatory was easily accessible by subway and bus. The only requirement was that you put in a good attendance each morning at or before 6:00 a.m. The station was on the roof of Harvard College Observatory and the scopes were placed in the correct positions previously by learned members. You were assigned a scope each day and a recording sheet. There were special training sessions prior to October 1957.

After Sputnik was launched on October 4, 1957, we were notified to report. Reporters came to interview us, take photographs and mostly wait for the skies to clear. Radio receivers picked up the beep . . . beep. . .beep sound transmitted by Sputnik, but it eluded visual observations.

Figure 1. Moonwatch team member Anna Hillier with her book The History of Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston during the 2006 annual meeting of the Society for Amateur Scientists in Providence, Rhode Island. Photograph by Forrest M. Mims III.

Timings were gathered from Australia, but it wasn't until October 10 that an observation was reported in Connecticut. On October 12 the skies cleared, and our group made observations. I was first to see the satellite, and then others on the roof sounded their buzzers.

We continue watching and recording although I don't remember making any more sightings. Later when the data was processed it showed that I had seen Sputnik itself and that the other members saw only the booster rocket. Actually, what most people saw from the ground was the booster rocket, which was much brighter than the 8th magnitude of Sputnik. After three weeks of observations, I no longer attended as the data was all they needed for Sputnik 1. The radio transmissions were silent, and the tracking data was known. The large Baker-Nunn cameras could follow and photograph Sputnik and satellites to come.

I went back to making my telescope and the mundane life of work.