A nightwatchman’s tale:
My adventures as a comet discoverer and skywatcher

It took 917 hours at the eyepiece spread over 19 years before David Levy discovered his first comet. Twenty-one finds later, he is still going strong. Thanks in part to one of his co-discoveries, Shoemaker-Levy 9, we know more about the role that comet collisions have played in the origin and evolution of life on Earth. Levy still searches for comets both visually and with an automated telescope equipped with a CCD. In this talk he will describe his observing career and explain how his childhood fascination with the night sky led him to become one of the leading comet discoverers of all time.

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About David Levy

Canadian-born David Levy has discovered 22 comets, nine of them using his own backyard telescopes. Most celebrated was Shoemaker-Levy 9, discovered jointly with Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker at the Palomar Observatory in California, which collided with Jupiter in 1994. Levy is currently involved with the Jarnac Comet Survey, based at his privately owned Jarnac Observatory in Vail, Arizona, but which has telescopes planned for locations around the world. He began comet hunting at the end of 1965, found his first comet in November 1984, and his most recent in October 2006.
Levy is the author or editor of 35 books and other products. He writes the monthly Star Trails column for Sky & Telescope magazine. He and his wife Wendee host a weekly radio show available at www.letstalkstars.com. He has been awarded five honorary doctorates, and asteroid 3673 (Levy) was named in his honour. David and Wendee Levy live in Vail, Arizona.

 

David Levy’s home page
Wikipedia entry