The Day I Discovered…

I enjoy taking on new challenges and getting an article published in a national magazine always seemed like an achievable goal to aim for. So, in 2007, I set out to write an essay for the preeminent astronomy magazine, Sky and Telescope.

I wrote a reflective essay on three astronomical discoveries that I made during my short career as an astronomer. My goal was to illustrate how the more “professional” I became as an astronomer, the less meaningful, personally, the discoveries became. You can read the article here.

The story behind how the article was eventually published is worth telling because it illustrates just how long some of these goals can take to achieve. My first email to the editors at S&T was in October of 2007. I received no reply until May of 2008 – a full 7 months later. The editor liked the idea and asked me to prepare a 600-word essay, which I turned around for them within a couple weeks. After some back-and-forth in the summer of 2008, there was once again radio silence. In March of 2010 (18 months since my last contact), I received an email from an editor at S&T asking if I had authored an essay that they had in their files – it was my long lost submission. And so, over three years after my initial inquiry, my brief article was published in the July 2010 issue of Sky and Telescope.